Tribe said what? #009

Hey friends.

Tribe said what? is back. First Tuesday of every month from here.

We took a moment to sort a few things behind the scenes. The studio site now has a Tribe Notes section where we'll be putting all the useful stuff in one place. Two resources live so far, The Shelf Ready Score and The Shelf Respect Guide, plus a first blog post on what actually makes a challenger brand. More on the way over the next few weeks.

Same shape as before. Brand breakdowns, observations on what's working in challenger CPG, and a new section showing what's actually happening in the studio.

Here's what's caught our eye this month →

WHAT CAUGHT OUR EYE 👀

Gut & Glory Sauces

I spotted Gut & Glory at one of the trade shows recently and it's stuck with me since.

Gut health is everywhere right now. Fibre, fermentation, the microbiome, all of it. The category has exploded. And the design has mostly settled into a particular look, clinical, worthy, science-leaning. Lots of clean labels, lots of "supports your gut" copy, lots of beige.

Gut & Glory has gone the other way. Warm cream packaging. A hand-drawn character on the front. Product names like "daily ketchup" and "daily green" that read more like something off a friendly café menu than a functional food product. It feels welcome on your kitchen table rather than tucked away in a supplement cupboard.

The detail I keep thinking about is the descriptor on the front: "Fibre-Maxxed." It's gym-bro language. Slightly silly. Definitely not what you'd expect from a sauce brand making a health claim. And that's exactly why it works. It tells you the brand isn't taking itself too seriously, while the product is genuinely doing the functional thing.

That tension is the interesting bit. Most functional food brands seem to think they need to look serious to be taken seriously. Gut & Glory makes the opposite bet, that the warmth and the wit are what make the function feel real.

Worth watching. I think there's a wider pattern here, the next wave of functional food brands probably won't look functional at all.

CHALLENGER THINKING 🧠

The category lookalike trap

Founders show me their packaging and ask if it looks credible. I get it. You want buyers and shoppers to take you seriously, and the easiest way to look serious is to mirror the codes of the category leader.

The trouble is, that's also the easiest way to be ignored.

Walk down the protein bar aisle. Most of the new entrants have copied the same shorthand. Matte foil. Hero ingredient illustration. Claim stack down one side. They've borrowed credibility from the leaders. They've also borrowed invisibility.

The brands that break out tend to do the opposite. They look at the category codes, work out which ones are useful, and break the rest. Tony's Chocolonely with the uneven blocks. Graza with the (now widely copied) green squeeze bottle. Gut & Glory with sauces that look more like deli than a health supplement.

The point isn't to be different for the sake of it. It's to be specific. If you know who you're for and what you stand for, you don't need to borrow credibility. The product earns it.

I think the lookalike instinct comes from a sensible place. Founders worry about looking weird, so they reach for the codes everyone uses. But weird, when it's grounded in a clear point of view, is usually what gets remembered.

If your brand looks like five others on shelf, that's not credibility. That's camouflage.

FROM THE STUDIO 💥

Tudy's Kitchen tease

We've been quietly heads-down on a project for the past few months and it's nearly ready to share.

Tudy's Kitchen makes ice cream unlike anything else in the freezer. Founder Nekeia has built something genuinely original, flavours that don't compromise, a perspective that doesn't borrow from anywhere else. We took her through the full G.R.O.W.T.H. process and the work that came out the other side is some of the most fun we've had in the studio.

Full reveal coming soon. Watch this space.