Take off your shoes and sit back and relax (be like James! it’s fun!) and enjoy this video of James and Pojo talking about disruptive brands in marketing. 

Or rather, what it means to be disruptive. 

Sure, maybe you know what “being disruptive” already means: making a mess of things, causing confusion, wreaking havoc.

But what are disrupters?

Basically: sexy, millennial brands coming into the picture and going against bigger companies.

In present day marketing, transparency has become a key component in consumers’ decision-making (as discussed in the previous video). What that results in is more conscious consumers who ask more questions than they would have 10 years ago.

For example, James and Pojo talk about Luxottica and Warby Parker. Luxottica is a huge manufacturing company that “owns” a large portion of the sunglasses market (Chanel, Prada, and cheaper companies).

Monumental brands, like Warby Parker, questioned the backhand side of the system: It’s cheap to make glasses, and I don’t need a middle man for that, so why am I buying from this huge factory and huge company that isn’t very resourceful for me? 

In other words: brands (millennial-like, similar to Warby Parker) disrupted the model that was already set in stone.

They took ownership of what was happening behind the scenes and made sure there was no fogginess or confusion. They created something transparent with their consumers that was not only appealing because it gave their customers knowledge, but it also painted a clean aesthetic for the brand. Then, they messaged a streamline of why they were better: “I’m better because I do x, y, and z, and I can show you more of how that works. I can prove it to you.” 

Other brands saw the positive response to their “sustainable” ways and decided that they wanted to do something similar.

Tip: to successfully appeal to the consumer market, use trigger words or mimic marketing actions.

For example, if a new product comes out and they’re marketed as “organic”, health-conscious consumers will give into it because “organic” is a trigger word.

This attitude and this way of marketing a brand and appealing to consumers became something easy to mimic and mass-produce. More and more brands are understanding that it’s important to disrupt something that isn’t 100% transparent, despite being popular and probably set in stone.

They’re realizing that to be successful, they need to be transparent.

It’s that easy.