While more traditional marketing tends to follow predictable patterns, disruptive marketing explores new paths, thereby differentiating itself from the competition. This type of marketing sometimes takes more risks, but it can also yield a much stronger return on investment. However, to achieve this, you need to thoroughly understand the audience you want to target.
If you want to give your marketing strategy a fresh twist and believe your brand needs to break out of the box to truly impact your audience, stay with us because here we'll tell you everything you need to know to put disruptive marketing into practice.
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Disruptive marketing: what it is and its differentiating strategies
How does disruptive marketing work?
Innovative, unexpected, and eye-catching . These are the hong kong email list adjectives that best define disruptive marketing. But, as you might already know, all of this requires a thorough brainstorming process , supported by:
An analysis of the context and everything that happens around the brand's theme.
Curious facts and details that are not perceived at first glance
A solid creative process
A process of seeking inspiration and analyzing the competition to ensure you're not repeating something that's already been done.
A good storytelling .
The team's intuition about what the target audience thinks and feels.
The use of new technologies, original narratives, and collaborations with unexpected profiles are the order of the day in disruptive marketing, as they are the avenues through which the most innovation can be achieved.
However, for a disruptive marketing campaign to be considered successful, it's not enough to simply be creative and engaging; it's essential that it generates good , measurable results. But beware! These results may not be immediate. Although disruptive marketing often generates a very explosive impact in a short period of time, this doesn't always have to be the case, and that doesn't mean it's considered a failure. Persistence and continuous effort are also adjectives that characterize this type of marketing.
Ultimately, innovation without results is what defines poorly planned disruptive marketing, and we're not just talking about sales results, as the brand's objective may be something else.
Current trends in disruptive marketing
As its name suggests, disruptive marketing is a constant search for innovation, so it's an area where we find very interesting and frequently changing trends. In this section, we want to share some of the most interesting ones so you can create better strategies.
Artificial Intelligence : Companies are using AI to analyze large volumes of data with high precision and thus create a much more accurate profile of the ideal customer. Furthermore, thanks to predictive AI , brands can understand their audience's needs before they even come to light, ideal for disruptive marketing. But most interestingly, AI makes it possible to bring disruptive marketing closer to small and medium-sized businesses, as the tools developed with this technology often come at quite affordable prices. Not only that, but content creation can also be developed with the support of this type of technology, making video, text, and image production much more democratic.
Phygital experiences : These types of experiences blend the physical and digital realms, and are currently very popular in disruptive marketing. They combine the best of both worlds, allowing for more meaningful connections with the audience and more fluid and immersive interactions. Augmented reality campaigns are one of the best examples of how disruptive marketing uses these types of experiences. In the Pepsi Max example below, you can see how this brand brought this trend to life in a very original way.
“Culture comes first” : This concept is very popular in today's disruptive marketing and is based on prioritizing the alignment of a company's culture and values with those of its target audience to achieve greater campaign effectiveness and a stronger connection with consumers. In this sense, marketing strategies reflect respect for the audience's culture. Dove 's famous real beauty campaign is a good example of this type of disruptive marketing, which is now on the rise again.
Examples of disruptive marketing
KFC
In Spain, we could say that the fast-food brand KFC is one of the most influential on social media, especially when it comes to X and TikTok. Its secret? Spontaneity . They give their community manager complete freedom to publish whatever they want. As Kerman Romeo, Director of Communications and Media, explained to the media outlet Expansión, "we're like just another user." And the truth is, if you log into any of their social media channels, their account looks more like a parody account than that of a major brand.
This freedom enjoyed by the community manager has led to a rapid growth in followers and interactions. Kerman stated that they opted for a strategy without much idea of whether they would be successful. They hired a young man with almost no experience as a community manager and opted for a strategy that emphasized spontaneity, minimal planning, and speed . But what is clear is that they knew exactly who their target audience was.
They've managed to differentiate themselves from other brands in the sector with a low-budget strategy and achieved great results, being the best example of how to implement disruptive marketing without much investment. Of course, this is something not all brands can do, only those that sell a more casual product. But it's a good example that disruptive marketing doesn't require extensive resources; a creative mind can be enough.
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Dollar Shave Club
This razor brand has managed to reach 28 million views on YouTube with the aforementioned spot thanks to its use of humor and a unique value proposition. As with KFC, humor is once again a very interesting ingredient in disruptive marketing, as it has great power to go viral, grab the public's attention, and make them see you as something different. This is because most companies view marketing from an overly formal and serious perspective, and while this is essential in some sectors, in others this rule can be broken, and we must take advantage of it.
Nestea
A recent example of disruptive marketing is the "There's Nestea" campaign launched in January 2025. Developed by the Smäll agency and directed by Laura Sisteró, the campaign uses humor to narrate the despair of fans when they think Nestea has sold out, only to discover it's still available, sparking a celebration. The campaign includes a 60-second main piece and 40-, 20-, and 15-second versions, broadcast on television, connected platforms, and digital media, in addition to being reinforced in outdoor and point-of-sale environments. Since January 1, 2025, Damm has been responsible for the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of Nestea in Spain, Andorra, and Gibraltar, maintaining the same quality standards.