From clicks to communities: The smarter AI play for challenger brands
Opinion
Challenger brands should use AI to outsmart their rivals to gain a competitive edge, writes Herdify’s CEO.
AI is reshaping marketing at speed. The biggest advertisers are pouring millions into media buying and audience targeting, chasing efficiency through automation and optimisation.
Across the industry, most marketers are testing AI for content, bidding, or service tasks. The hype is huge, but so is the uncertainty. Many wonder what it means for creativity, jobs, or strategy. Yet the most pressing fear isn’t replacement – it’s falling behind. Nobody wants to be the brand still running manual processes while competitors move faster.
That pressure is even greater for challenger brands. They can’t outspend the giants, and copying their tactics with fewer resources is a losing game.
Their edge will come from using AI differently: to understand why people buy, where momentum is building, and how to act on it quickly. Done well, this gives them a genuine competitive advantage – one that doesn’t depend on outspending the competition, but on outsmarting them.
From small data to big signals
A common misconception is that you need enormous datasets to make AI work. Challenger brands rarely have that luxury, but the good news is, they don’t need it. Even modest sales or location data, when analysed with the right models, can expose clusters of human influence: those neighbourhoods or communities where advocacy is already spreading and adoption is accelerating.
This is where AI provides value beyond traditional targeting. Instead of asking “who clicked an ad?” the sharper question becomes “where is behaviour multiplying?” By spotting compounding behaviour, brands can direct their investment into places where word-of-mouth is already working for them.
The impact isn’t just more reach; it’s better quality customers. Focusing on clusters where advocacy is present often yields higher-value buyers, stronger retention, and greater efficiency in acquisition. For challengers, this is the difference between burning budget to chase impressions and seeding growth where the ground is already fertile.
Communities are always-on
Marketers often treat audiences as static lists of profiles, but in reality, they’re living, breathing networks of humans. Attitudes and behaviours shift constantly, especially in categories where peer influence plays a significant role. AI enables this view to remain always-on, highlighting where advocacy is rising, stalling, or expanding into new areas.
For challenger brands, that insight supports agility. Instead of waiting for quarterly results, marketers can make quick adjustments in the creative or channel based on what’s happening now. If momentum is building in a new area, they can double down. If it’s slowing, they can pivot.
This responsiveness is where challengers can turn their smaller scale into an advantage. While large organisations may be locked into rigid cycles and heavy processes, smaller players can operate in faster loops – detecting, acting, measuring, and scaling in weeks rather than months.
Planning for influence, not just reach
When influence is driven by people and communities, media planning needs to reflect that reality. If advocacy is local and visible, the channels that amplify it should be too.
That means out-of-home near emerging clusters, direct mail to high-propensity postcodes, or regional TV in areas where word-of-mouth is already strong. Creative should show people like me choosing the brand, because social proof beats abstract persuasion.
Measurement is equally important. Success shouldn’t be judged solely on clicks or conversions. By using simple geographic or cohort controls, brands can track penetration, average order value, or acquisition cost in areas where advocacy is highest.
AI accelerates this process by surfacing where to test, delivering faster results, and signalling where budgets should be redeployed. The upshot is less waste, more effective spend, and strategies that scale more sustainably.
AI is everywhere in marketing, but not all applications are created equal. For the biggest brands, it’s largely about operational gains. For challengers, it can be something much more powerful: a way to see customers not as static profiles, but as living communities whose behaviour compounds through influence.
By using AI to reveal and act on those dynamics, challengers can invest smarter, move faster, and compete on their own terms. The giants may buy efficiency – but the real opportunity lies in building advantage through human influence.
Tom Ridges is the CEO for Herdify