The WARC Guide to scale-up brands: Strategies for accelerating growth

In WARC’s recent guide for high-growth, scale-up brands, they cover some of the fundamental challenges that these businesses face and how they can overcome them. Many of which align with the way we help brands achieve growth, which is why the report also features our work with WaterWipes.

Here we summarise a few of the key takeaways, as well as the story behind how we took a modest family-owned brand with a great product, to a global player with a fraction of the budget of category goliaths like Pampers and Huggies.

With start-ups focussing heavily on customer acquisition, there is usually an outweighed reliance on performance-marketing. As WARC highlights, this will not help to build the brand in the long-term. As these channels reach saturation point, growth comes from taking a multi-channel approach with a longer-term view of brand building.

When scale-up brands shift from activation and acquisition to brand building, there is both a channel shift and forecast shift that is required for success. WARC discusses how TV can be a key channel for scale-ups when thinking about brand building. Although a channel that feels like it has big risks for scale-ups, the Video Advertising Bureau shows how an increasing number of DTC brands who made the move from performance marketing to TV have found it to be a significant factor in their growth.

Just as we help brands to find their place in culture through purposeful means, WARC emphasises the importance for scale-ups to think beyond media KPIs and consider social impact KPIs too. As Preeti Mascarenhas, Chief Strategy Officer of Dentsu APAC, explains in the guide – brands have the power to change the way people behave, consume, and interact with them” providing an opportunity for meaningful impact.

Our work with WaterWipes was the very definition of our value proposition – we help brands rise above the noise and find their place in culture through an earned-first approach to advertising. By leveraging owned media for WaterWipes, we were able to create an omnichannel earned-first brand platform called #ThislsParenthood. It informed everything from consumer communications to healthcare professional engagements, and customer service to loyalty programmes. And the results speak for themselves – a highly distinct brand that became the second biggest seller on Amazon, had a 75% share of voice vs. Pampers & Huggies (with a fraction of the paid budget), 7% up-lift in brand consideration and a +5% increase in sales immediately following launch ($4bn market).

Read the full guide on WARC. And if you want to learn more about how we can support brand growth through earned-first advertising, get in touch.