How disruptive brands are redefining marketing

Disruptive brands need to devise marketing models that are as innovative and creative as their businesses, according to senior executives working in a range of disruptive companies.

The marketers, drawn from the 100 Disruptive Brands list compiled by Marketing Week in partnership with Salesforce, offer guidance on how to scale at speed and reach audiences on digital channels.

James Kirkham, chief strategy officer at YouTube football channel Copa90, explains that the brand frames its marketing strategy around its original content and self-generated online forums. “So much [of Copa90’s marketing] is built around its own properties, its own content, its own shows,” he says.

“They are flagship pieces – the stuff that an audience can coalesce around and that fans look to find themselves in. They have their own viewerships and they become marketing properties in their own right.”

Eren Ozagir, founder of on-demand healthcare service Push Doctor, states that his marketing strategy is dictated by the need to acquire customers and introduce them to a new type of service. “We have had to be different about the way we market our product because no one did it before,” he claims.

“I know people will think [that] marketing healthcare has been done for years and years – [that’s true] as an insurance product, but not in a fully packaged digital experience.”

Similarly, Unmade co-founder Kirsty Emery notes that the bespoke clothing maker needs an innovative marketing model that can communicate its innovative service offer. This includes educating customers as much as possible about how to buy the brand’s products.

“For us, because the customer is involved in every single area, and their involvement is key to every garment being produced, we have to be able to talk to them and show them how to go along this process,” she says.

“A lot of what we do is visual and dynamic – we make a lot of videos to help our customers through the process so they can see how to use the site, where to click [and] what to do.”

For Stephen Rapoport, founder of subscription coffee service Pact, a relentless focus on performance marketing has been key to growing his business. “If I spend £1,000 on a certain channel, acquiring new customers, I know exactly what the revenue profile of those customers will be over the next four years,” he says.

“That’s incredibly powerful because it means we can make trading decisions almost in real time about where our next marketing pound is spent.”