A client recently asked me: “What makes a brand Remarkable?”
Good question.
Seth Godin - who gave the word its marketing meaning - put it simply: a brown cow is invisible. A purple cow gets noticed. Talked about.
That’s half the answer. The other half is a story about three types of brands.
The Famous Brand. The Remarkable Brand. & the Challenger Brand.
Ask a founder which of these they aspire to be & you’ll get the same response.
Famous. Of course.
Wrong answer.
Famous
Famous is what a brand becomes when everybody knows its name. Nice work if you can get it. The catch: nobody can tell you what it stands for. Or why they should care.
Amazon is Famous. Walmart is Famous. You use them. You may even depend on them.
Now finish this sentence: “Amazon believes ___.”
Fast. Cheap. Anything. Everything. Those are products. Or services. Not beliefs.
Famous Brands win on scale, price & convenience. Which means they must keep winning on scale, price & convenience. Every quarter. Forever.
Fame is rented. & the rent always goes up.
Famous is known. Remarkable is known for something.
Remarkable
Remarkable Brands stir up conversation. Controversy. They’re the brands people argue about. Defend. Can’t shut up about. Because they believe in something so strongly, it shows. & audiences can always tell a brand that believes from one that’s pretending.
A truly Remarkable Brand is still remarked on decades later. That is, if it sticks to its guns. Yes, a brand can - & should - evolve. But what people talk about & argue about is what it believes. Always.
Patagonia believes the planet outranks the product. Always.
Hermès believes in the craft that made it. Always.
Chanel believed, in 1910, that fashion should free a woman, not bind her. & 116 years later it’s the hottest name in fashion. Again.
Remarkable Brands say no to things that would make a business larger, safer, more broadly approved of. In boardrooms, anyway. They opt out. Not of ambition, but of the logic that rewards caution, seeks consensus & mistakes the management of a brand for the building of one.
Remarkable is a form of resistance.
Hermès won’t license. Patagonia ran an ad telling you not to buy the jacket. Chanel won’t cut its prices.
A belief that never costs you anything is a tagline.
Neither is free. Famous costs you your point of view. Remarkable costs you the money you might have made.
& Famous is where Remarkable Brands go to die.
Challenger
Two different outcomes. One beginning.
The truly great, memorable & category-changing brands start out as Challengers.
A Challenger isn’t a small brand playing David to a Goliath. It’s a brand with a fight. Chutzpah. It finds something in its category unacceptable & sets out to change it. It projects a very clear sense of who it is. Where it stands as a business. The line it won’t cross to get to a sale. It doesn’t conform to category conventions. In fact, it breaks them.
Gabrielle Chanel didn’t wait for fashion’s permission. She borrowed her lover’s boxy jackets & oversized shirts & put them on women. That’s a Challenger.
Gabrielle Chanel vs. the corset. Nike vs. the idea that only the extraordinary are athletes. Apple vs. Big Blue. Amazon vs. the bookstore. Walmart vs. full price.
Read that list again. Every one of them was a Challenger. Not every one stayed interesting.
The fork in the road
A Challenger that wins has two roads in front of it.
Road One: Scale it. Sand off the edges. Add the SKUs. Say yes to everyone. Become the thing for everybody. & stand for nothing in particular.
That road ends at Famous.
Road Two: Keep the fight. Maybe update the product, expand the audience, explore a new channel, advance the technology. Evolve & alter everything but your belief. Keep saying no.
That road ends at Remarkable.
I know which road most brands take. I watched one take it.
I’ve seen all three. In one brand.
Origins started as a Challenger.
Late 1980s. Beauty was faux-French names, unpronounceable ingredients & “experts” telling women they needed to be fixed. We found that unacceptable. Our fight was based on one word: Respect.
Respect for our audience’s skin. Their intelligence. Their pocketbook. The planet. We never put the word in an ad. We put it in everything else we did. Plain white recycled packaging, no animal testing, counselors we called Guides whose job was to tell — not sell.
For more than ten years, Origins refused to play by the industry’s rules. & that refusal was the brand.
Then it became Remarkable.
Nobody ever said: “I use Origins.” They said: “I love Origins.”
Competitors took notice. Co-opted our naming system. Our commitment. Our approach to wellness vs. appearance. Assumed our identity, making Origins the most widely copied beauty brand in the world.
Then it became Famous.
Over the years, no one attacked the belief. It got managed. There were numbers to be met. Margins to be minded. Trends & shiny objects to be chased. One reasonable decision at a time, by reasonable people, in reasonable meetings. One quarter at a time.
Today Origins exists. Technically. You know the name. Go ahead & tell me what it believes. What it stands for. I can’t.
That’s Famous.
Nobody kills a Remarkable Brand
It gets managed to death.
The killers are never villains. Or the competitors. It’s the growth plan. The line extension. The “broader audience.” The new CEO’s ego. The investor who says your edges are limiting your TAM - Total Addressable Market.
News flash: The edges are the brand. They’re what gives you LTV - Lifetime Value.
So how do you stay Remarkable?
Two things. Neither of them easy.
Write down what you won’t do. Your line in the sand. Before you win, while it still costs nothing to say.
& make the belief bigger than any one person. Origins had a champion. When that person left, the managing began. If the belief can walk out the door, it will.
Which road will you choose?
I run a consultancy called Insurgents. Challengers are my peeps.
& I believe that a Remarkable Brand is always a Challenger that won without surrendering.
So, what do I tell every Challenger I root for? The fight gets you noticed. Creates the awareness. Your first sales.
It doesn’t tell you who you’ll be when you win.
I’ve watched the wrong road from the inside. & I’ve walked the right one.
The wrong road doesn’t feel like selling out. It feels like having a good quarter.
Decide now. Before the funding round. Before the big retailer calls. Before somebody offers you fame & calls it growth.
Challenger gets you noticed. Famous gets you known. Remarkable gets you loved. & Remembered.
Which brand will you become?
Happy to help.
Best, Robin