How Do You Launch (or Relaunch) a Brand in 2024?

It’s noisy out there. In one sense, these are challenging times in which to try and launch a brand. There’s a cacophony of content against which to compete, and consumers are becoming ever-more savvy and discerning. Of course, more competition isn’t always a bad thing - but it does make for a hefty marketing challenge. In the words of Six+One’s founder and CCO Eric Rojas, “if you think ‘I have a great product and therefore it will sell itself’, think again. You have to be disruptive”. 

At the same time, however, there are modern tools available to solve those challenges. “In the old days, if you had enough budget you did TV, if not then OOH, and maybe radio before resorting to direct mail and local newspapers if your budget wouldn't stretch”, notes Six+One’s MD Leigh Baker. “Building brand equity was expensive and hard, but now there are much more accessible ways of launching and positioning new brands”. 

But how can brands be sure they’re making the most out of those methods? To find out, LBB sat down with the Six+One team to hear from their experience of helping a plethora of brands to make positive first impressions - whether that be through launching, rebranding, or pivoting to new audiences through a fresh product offering. Above all else, we wanted to ask: How should you launch a brand in 2024? 

Embrace Your Own Story 

One example of Six+One helping to carve out an identity for a young brand is the agency’s work with Bridgewater Chocolate. “Bridgewater is a premium independent chocolate business based out of Connecticut, focused on the high-end gifting market”, explains Leigh. “The brand had only ever really been defined by their core founders, and they had never done any real work to articulate their brand in a compelling way. We realised that to unlock growth and bring new people in we needed to dig deep into the brand's origin story, reframe it, and build from there”. 

And so that’s precisely what the team did. Over the course of the agency’s meticulous discovery research, which included several stakeholder interviews, Six+One landed on an insight that one of Bridgewater’s founders was a classically-trained Swedish chocolatier - and so had a focus the detail, premium ingredients, and finesse which characterised European chocolate. Since moving Stateside, however, that founder had become fascinated with classic American confectionery such as Snickers and Hershey's, which used flavour combinations largely unseen on the opposite side of the Atlantic. As a result, Bridgewater had become a fusion of the two chocolate-making styles - something that gave the brand an appeal which was authentic, compelling, and entirely its own. 

“This led us to come up with the positioning idea of the chocolate you grew up loving grew up in quality too’ and that became the new platform for the brand’s website, ecommerce strategy, and social media activations”, says Leigh. 

The refreshed identity contributed to Bridgewater’s continued growth, and illustrates a valuable lesson for brands looking to make their mark: If you want to tell a story about yourself, make it a real one. 

Meet Your Audience Where They Are 

When Spectrum Internet took a fresh look at its plans for growth, the brand alighted on a tantalising ambition: Becoming the go-to internet provider for gamers. The only problem was that this represented a demographic the brand had never directly connected with in the past. Enter Six+One, and a strategy to successfully introduce Spectrum Internet to a traditionally tough marketing nut to crack: Gamers. 

“Gamers are smart, they’re savvy, and they know when they’re being marketed to”, notes Eric. “Instead of marketing them with the same creative assets for their core, we had to reach gamers where they were. So, we created a brand platform particularly for gamers and redefined how gamers viewed Spectrum”. 

Sometimes, it takes an outside perspective to help a brand learn things about itself. So it was with Spectrum, as Six+One’s own research highlighted how the brand was the number one internet service provider for gamers - so the brand was already pushing at an open door in seeking to connect with that market. “We created a platform that felt like it was inside gaming with the line ‘Gamers Get It.’”, recalls Eric. “It spoke to that feeling of being in-the-know, and created a sense of wanting to be part of that community for gamers who’d yet to sign up”. 

The resulting campaign, supported by digital videos, social, OOH, and mobile, was targeted around Valentine’s Day and hooked to the theme of ‘breaking up with your internet provider’. “Having gamers break up with their ISP and asking them to share it online with their friends gave Spectrum credibility, because it came from their audience rather than directly from the brand”, says Eric. 

There’s a broader point here, too, about thinking beyond platforms for a purpose-built brand strategy. “Most approaches to brand development are still rooted in the broadcast era. But as an omnichannel agency, we operate from the belief that today’s brands must be purpose-built for a multi-touch, multi-dimensional world”, says Rich Notarianni, Six+One’s VP of strategy. “We start with understanding how consumers experience the brand in both the physical and digital space, understanding how the brand is recognised, sold, bought, how it’s used, and ultimately how it’s shared”. 

The approach lent an organic quality to the campaign, and introduced Spectrum to the gamer demographic on the best possible terms. That ability to know precisely who your audience is - quirks, nuances, and all - has become something of a hallmark for Six+One, and it feeds into the agency’s broader positioning of ‘Disruption For Good’. 

Disruption For Good 

‘Disruption’ has become a familiar word across the industry in recent years, but Six+One’s interpretation of it helps give the agency an edge when it comes to launching or relaunching brands. 

“At Six+One we think about Disruption for Good as delivering commercial success for our clients, or creating social impact in our communities”, explains Leigh. “We approach that by focusing at the strategic phase on defining what the codes and conventions are of the given category we are launching our clients' brand into. By doing that, we’re able to identify the white space opportunity. We then try to identify the appropriate level of disruption for our client's brand to seize a disproportionate advantage”. 

Baked into that approach is a willingness to forgo category conventions - a point that Rich is keen to underline. “There’s always a temptation to watch how your brand performs against its competitors”, he says. “But the most effective brands don’t sell their category. Instead, they raise expectations about what the category could be. As a strategist, you don’t find much whitespace in your brand’s market these days - so you need to create your own”. 

Building on that, Eric breaks down ‘Disruption For Good’ into three components. “It’s about reinventing brands, redefining categories, and reshaping culture”, he says. “We work to create new realities by changing the way individuals see things, think about things, and get things done. We don’t just see the future and wait; we create and establish it”. 

In that context, it’s easy to understand what makes Six+One’s offering such a suitable fit for brands looking to make a first impression. But for those looking to build on a successful launch and continue making an impact, it helps to continue taking a fresh approach to communications. 

“The most common mistakes you see are brands trying to do too much too quickly, or be all things to all people. In doing so, they lose sight of what makes them unique”, summarises Eric. “Our approach is about helping to avoid that. We build out a framework that extends beyond launch with a rollout strategy for the year ahead”.  

As a parting comment, Eric suggests that brands should think about their marketing strategy from day one as different chapters in the same book. “You introduce the characters and make them interesting right from the start - and as new events happen across the story, the soul of those characters remains grounded in their identity. That’s how you build a recognisable brand that people remember, and keep your momentum going”. 

Conventional wisdom suggests that we only get one chance at a first impression. But for brands looking to be remembered and make authentic connections with their audiences, it helps to treat every communication as though it’s the first.