PHD Malaysia launched its latest thought‐leadership publication “Overthrow II” at an event for its clients and partners in Kuala Lumpur on Sept 24.
The conference drew an audience of 150 delegates from the marketing industry. Drawing on the insights and experiences of today’s challengers disrupting the status quo, Overthrow II identifies 10 different challenger types including Real & Human, Feisty Underdog, Local Hero, Next Generation, and Dramatic Disruptor.
The new book carries interviews with some of the freshest and most interesting contemporary examples, including Oatly, BrewDog, COPA90, Tony’s Chocolonely, Mailchimp and Xiaomi, and looks at the strategic principles that each follows, the media behaviours they practice and draws conclusions about what these challenger types have in common when it comes to marketing behaviour.
At the launch event, PHD Malaysia managing director Eileen Ooi set the stage by emphasizing on PHD’s commitment to thought‐leadership and innovation and the importance of going beyond one‐dimensional conversations around challenger thinking to understand the new wave of challengers better.
PHD Malaysia’s general manager for Strategy and Platforms Kiron Kesav delivered the keynote presentation on Overthrow II, highlighting the 10 different challenger types and the five key challenger principles that all the challenger brands follow and how these principles can be applied by Malaysian brands.
The event also saw a line‐up of Malaysian challenger brands and thinkers. Chery Anne Low, co‐founder of Nude the ZERO WASTE Store spoke about ‘Challenging through a strong sense of purpose’ while sharing the story of how her brand was born.
Amy Zheng, CEO and co‐founder of Amazin’ Graze, shared her thoughts on ‘Challenging by redefining the boundaries and practices of a category’ and how she and her team adopts challenger thinking at her organisation.
Guests also heard from BFM founder Malek Ali, who shared his “CV (Challenger Vitae)” on stage, giving a glimpse into his life as a challenger, while sharing his thoughts on “What it means to
live and breathe a challenger mindset”.
During the event, Kesav moderated two power panel discussions on - “Satiating the super‐consumers in the age of challenger thinking” and “Revolution vs Evolution ‐ is there a need to balance the two as more marketers adopt to challenger thinking”.
The final segment of the event saw PHD Malaysia recognise challenger icons in Malaysia, identified through an open‐ended survey with a sample size of more than 1,000 respondents done in partnership with Vase.ai. Challenger brands across five different categories were identified:
>Challenging through Technology & Innovation – Huawei
>Challenging through Product – Safi
>Challenging through Creativity – Samsung
>Challenging through Attitude – Ikea
>Challenging by being Closer to the Community ‐ Nestle
Overthrow II is available for purchase via Amazon and overthrow2.com.
