The whole truth of Challenger Marketing

If you want to build a distinctive brand, think out of the box! Or better, build a new box! 📦

That's exactly what challenger brands do. They break category norms, disrupt the market, and change the status quo.

Shashank Mehta is the founder of The Whole Truth Foods, a D2C brand that promises 100% healthy alternatives to packaged foods. No synthetic fluff, only real ingredients. With this venture, he is out to rebuild consumers' trust in food.

Shashank says that consumers don’t differentiate between 85 and 90, they only differentiate between 0 and 100. He explains the philosophy of Challenger Thinking and why challenger brands are able to make a difference and rise above the din.

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Learn about:-

00:40- Figure who you are not

02:59- Brands are vehicles for building trust

09:41- Fundamental rule of storytelling

Read the text version of the episode below:-

[00:00:36] Today, if you were to ask any beer lover which is their favorite beer, the top three beers actually, I think Bira would certainly feature one amongst the top three. But today while Bira is very mainstream, at one time it wasn't, it was a challenger brand at one time. Why was it a challenger brand? Because it challenged convention. They went against the grain and they launched a beer of the kind [00:01:00] that one didn't think was possible. It was a craft beer that they brought mainstream and they did it in this very quirky fashion with this funny monkey that became very endearing and then we started looking out for that monkey, everything that they did with that craft beer, while craft beer is meant to be very hoity-toity, it became very accessible, fun and quirky in the way Bira brought it to us. Today, I'm talking to Shashank, he is the man behind another challenger brand called The Whole Truth. And he's going to talk about how he has built this brand and he's chosen to take a lot of bold bets. One of the things about challenger brands, building a challenger brand is that it's not only important to figure out who you are, it's actually more important to figure out who you are not. And the power of a challenger brand is really in the sacrifice. And how in the sacrifice you actually address a [00:02:00] much larger market. There is a reason why Maggie sells as much as it does, there's a reason why Kurkure sells as much as it does, because, of course, we all want to be spoken to, none of us like to be lied to, but the fact is that much as we talk about the need for help, much as we talk about how, oh, I'm so careful about what I eat, the fact is that we're all bingeing on all kinds of crap. Why you're not ever tempted by this notion that we are making something healthy but for the taste, we can sneak in some stuff that makes it tasty, but biologically healthy, but let's sneak in some stuff that will make it a lot more palatable, which will expand my appeal, my palate appeal to so many more people. Did you not think about that? Did you not think, oh, for my investors, I'd be able to say, look, I'm targeting a much larger market. Did you never fall into that temptation? 

[00:02:59] Shashank Mehta: When you said [00:03:00] that there's so many brands trying to be better for you, I think that's the problem. People go 90% of the way, 85% of the way, 95% of the way and I don't think consumers differentiate between 85, 95 and 90. People only differentiate between 0 and 100 and I think that harks back to trust. Brands are nothing but vehicle of building trust with the consumer and trust doesn't exist with 99% transparency, even if there's a seed of doubt and think of relationships, think of anything else in life, if there’s a seed of doubt, you will lose trust.

[00:03:35] Vani: Fantastic, Shashank. It's really, really awe-inspiring. I must say. So, you might've heard of the Big Fish, I'm a great fan of this book called the Big Fish, which is on challenger thinking. And one of the credos that he talks about in this book is the credo of sacrifice, which is like you said, consumers don't differentiate between 85, 90, 95. There is only the binary world either you're lying to me or you're telling me the [00:04:00] truth. If you have to make a difference, then you sit at the extremes and that is why challenger brands are able to rise above the din. It's fantastic, what you just spoke about and of course, the bit about leaving the world a better place, there are so few of us that think like that. So it's really heartening. Now, the other thing I wanted to ask you, Shashank is, again, because you've chosen to make a certain kind of a product, it would also mean that your innovation pipeline for the future will be relatively limited because if you have to stay true to your promise, again, when you thought about future implications when you thought about how else will I expand my product line? What kind of innovations will I look at? What kind of market will I extend into? What kind of taste buds, what consumer segments will I extend into? What kind of occasions can I occupy in doing all of that? You've still taken this. [00:05:00] You still made this choice of sticking true to your stated promise to the consumer which is the whole truth.

[00:05:08] Shashank Mehta: Yeah. So you're absolutely right. It does, doing such an extreme take on the product does put some special constraints on us. But as we've come along in the journey, we've realized two things. One, actually when you use great ingredients only, taste becomes great also and the proof of that is in your mom's cooking. All of us think that our moms cook the best food. 

[00:05:33] Vani: Yes. 

[00:05:33] Shashank Mehta: But it's impossible, right? That all of our moms can't be superlative. Most probably apart from her love that goes into the cooking. the secret ingredient is that she always gets fresh, great ingredients. She never puts any shit in your food. So we are discovering that when we use great produce, when we use great ingredients, taste actually becomes great. Having said that it is a lot tougher to arrive at the [00:06:00] product because, if binding is a problem, I can't throw in a sugary liquid in their dissolve binding. If dissolution is a problem, I can't throw in a preservative to solve that problem. So it takes a lot of trial and error and basically what we're doing is we're taking food back from science, right? So we can't apply science to it, we have to apply trial and error, just like you perfect the recipe at home, that's all you have to do. So that does put in certain constraints of time and what all we can do, et cetera. But what we are discovering, Vani, is that while it is difficult, it's not impossible. It has not been done till now because no one seems to have applied that lens to food and no one applied that lens because hey, if I'm making crores and crores by selling you shit, what is my incentive to sell you good stuff? So, and that's, as I said, the beauty of capitalism that brands have been lying for so long that they've left this truth flank open. So I can actually build a truthful brand and still [00:07:00] earn money out of it. Will it be tough? Yes. But then, what world-changing thing isn’t. So, there are constraints, but I actually think that if we power through them in the initial phase of journey, then, the muscle that we'll build internally of making hundred percent clean products and yet making them as tasty as everything else on the shelf is something that will also be really, really tough to replicate. So it will become a moat in the future. 

[00:08:05] Vani: Beautiful, which also means that you're saying no to hundred other ideas. You're saying no to hundred other possibilities, you have to constantly say no to the many temptations. 

[00:08:21] Shashank Mehta: It's also very liberating, right? You save so much time. You save so much bandwidth, not discussing a hundred, we’ll put this, we’ll put that, sort of stuff, like 99% of the questions are already out of the window. So you can actually just focus and buckle down and experience the joy of [00:08:00] coming to work and never ever feeling that, had it not been for the money, I wouldn't have been doing this. So I think it works. 

[00:08:10] Vani: But if I'm so narrowly focused, how will I expand my business in the future? Will my market not be very limited? Will I be able to attract sufficient funding in the future? Because I might be talking to a very, very narrow segment of consumers who really value this. Did that ever bother you?

[00:08:28] Shashank Mehta: I actually, again, it's a great point, every entrepreneur should think about it. The definition of how do you define the opportunity needs to be seen from the correct lens. So, as I said, had, I seen it from a protein bar market lens? It is minuscule and it doesn't make sense, right? But I believe that the problem of lying in obfuscation exists across food categories. It can be bakery products, it can be savoury products, it can be kids, see the shit that goes into kid food nowadays. We've grown up drinking these [00:09:00] malt beverages, which are not malt beverages. The first ingredient in them is sugar and then we believe that our kids have such great energy after drinking. Of course they will. They're having spoonful of sugar. And diabetic friendly food is not diabetic-friendly. So I don't think the market is small at all. The amount of lying that's going on across food categories, I think it will take a lifetime and more solving all of it and if we do the market is large, large, large, it's not small at all. 

[00:09:26] Vani: But this is a trap that most entrepreneurs fall into, which is this temptation to be everything to everyone.

[00:09:33] Shashank Mehta: Yeah, it is a Hindi saying- dhobi ka kutta.

[00:09:40] Vani: Yes. 

[00:09:41] Shashank Mehta: That's been very clear to me somehow from Day 1 that only, I think it's a fundamental rule of storytelling, that exaggeration, only exaggerated benefits and exaggerated stuff works, you have to be at one edge or the other. Anything in the middle is just [00:10:00] average and there is so much clutter in the consumer's mind and consumers’ life today that if you're not extremely differentiated and on an extreme edge of a promise, then most probably you'll get lost in the voices.