The Voice Of The Underdog: How Challenger Brands Create Distinction By Thinking Culture First

by Mike Sullivan, Michael Tuggle

What does building your company’s culture have to do with building your brand? Get ready to find out.In The Voice Of The Underdog®: How Challenger Brands Create Distinction By Thinking CULTURE FIRST, advertising veterans Mike Sullivan and Michael Tuggle unpack the poorly understood and grossly underleveraged connection between brand and culture. Filled with fascinating case studies, entertaining stories, and engaging insights, the book examines the true essence of what makes a company a challenger brand, unveils how successful challengers of all sizes use culture to create extraordinary brand distinction, and finishes with a detailed blueprint for building your own transcendent culture.

236 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 1, 2020

About the author

This is the disambiguation profile for authors publishing as Mike Sullivan.

See also: Michael Sullivan

Reviews

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Brands with the best cultures are most often the ones that win,” write Mike Sullivan and Michael Tuggle at the beginning of their new book, entitled The Voice of the Underdog: How Challenger Brands Create Distinction by Thinking Culture First. It’s somewhat of an irony that Sullivan and Tuggle talk about their approach as being something of an ‘underdog’ brand, only in the sense ‘underdog’ is no longer underdog. It’s probably one of the most effective branding strategies out there, courtesy of it becoming a cultural staple. Likely this is due to a sense of nostalgia infecting the commercial marketplace, stirred by current events, shifts in cultural mores, and wanting to diverge from the previous status quo cemented in the 2000s. As far as Sullivan and Tuggle are concerned, continuing to capitalize on being the ‘underdog’ is synonymous to long-term success, continuing to push the boundaries and breaking all of the (now completely arbitrary) rules. It’s a winning strategy for the ages, as far as they are concerned. “This is a book about what we believe is a poorly understood and grossly underleveraged connection between brand and culture. We offer our observations and clarify them with examples and stories in service to underdogs of all varieties across all categories, be they B2C, B2B, or both,” Mike Sullivan clarifies. “The subject is especially relevant for leaders running companies where ambitions run high but resources are modest. What my co-author and I address in the chapters that follow is the way leaders can cultivate unassailable competitive advantages by simply bringing more intention to the way their brands align with their cultures and vice versa.”

Together, they write: “…the ideas that drive the concept of challenger branding are much bigger and more potent than clever ad campaigns rooted in a twist or turn on runners-up claims…True challengers don’t follow convention. Instead, they expose the weakness of category norms with alternatives that often appear obvious with the perfect vision of hindsight. Challengers zig while others zag, and generally wreak havoc on competitors by showing up in a way that’s anything but expected. Challengers take consumers and competitors alike by surprise, which in turn provokes something every marketer desperately wants and needs—a response. Love them or hate them, challengers will not be ignored…We (know)…brand(s) (have) to do something to disrupt the market, and (they need) to be rooted in a point of difference. But not just any difference. It ha(s) to be a difference that customers would find important and engaging…From recruiting the right talent to attracting more customers…harmony (is) created when a company’s culture and brand are in sync (and) can produce the kind of magnetic draw that makes a challenger brand tough to beat. What we explore in the (book)…is how leaders can cultivate durable competitive advantages by simply bringing more intention to the way their brands align with their cultures and vice versa.”

Overall Grade: A

[Liz Burkhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gem! This book is a must read for anyone looking to improve culture in the workplace. Very readable, and full of examples of successful challenger brands, who have made their marks in sometimes unconventional ways. The authors lay down a step-by-step guide to creating “transcendent culture” in your own company. They intrigue you with questions interspersed throughout the book, allowing you to take a long look at the culture you are hoping to build within your company. This book should be found on every office bookshelf, and could certainly be incorporated into secondary learning. Invaluable insight from two industry veterans. Well done.

[Britain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent