A Brand Grows

A small or medium-sized brand often starts with an obvious disadvantage. It looks at its competitor and sees more distribution. More budget. More points of sale. More products. More promotions. More recognition. The natural reaction is to try to do the same.

More advertising. More channels. More products. More presence.

But a small company can rarely compete under every condition in which a larger one competes. And perhaps that is the wrong question from the very beginning.

The challenge is not how to compete everywhere. It is how to decide where we have a real opportunity to be chosen.

Before gaining market share, a brand needs to take part in a decision. And before it can grow, it needs to find where it can begin to become an alternative.

This idea builds on something consumer behavior research has studied for decades: people do not evaluate every available alternative, they use shortcuts to make decisions and, especially in FMCG, they do not always buy just one brand.

The consequence is simple: the competition we see from inside the company may be much bigger than the decision the consumer actually faces.

01Real Competition Starts Smaller Than the Category

A company can analyze an entire category. It can identify competitors, compare prices and measure market shares.

The consumer does not necessarily see that entire market.

When they need to make a purchase, they face a specific situation: a need, a budget, a channel and a moment. In front of them are certain alternatives.

Research on consideration sets helps explain this difference. Consumers do not evaluate every existing option because evaluation itself also comes at a cost in time, effort and attention.

Being in the market does not mean being in the decision.

For a small brand, that difference can change the way competition is understood.

Its real competitor is not always the entire category. In a specific decision, it may be competing against a much smaller set of alternatives.

The question then changes: where do the conditions of competition change enough for our brand to have a real opportunity?

02Being Known Matters. But Not in Just Any Way.

To take part in that set of alternatives, a brand needs some possibility of appearing.

This is where recognition comes in.

Recognizing a brand can help simplify decisions, especially in categories where purchases are frequent and the time available to evaluate alternatives is limited.

Recognizing a brand does not guarantee choosing it. But a brand that never appears as a recognizable alternative may never even enter consideration.

For a small company, this seems to confirm the advantage of larger brands. They are better known and have more resources to appear.

But a small brand does not need to be known by the entire market in order to start competing. It needs to build recognition where that recognition can help it enter a relevant decision.

The question is not simply: how do we get more people to know us?

A better question is: in which situations do we need to be recognized to have a chance of entering consideration?

Building general recognition is not the same as building useful recognition.

Advertising can increase the probability that a brand will be recognized. But first, we need to know in which situations we want that recognition to matter.

Strategy helps decide what we need to make visible. Communication helps make it recognizable.

03Consumers Do Not Belong Exclusively to One Brand

Companies often think about categories in binary terms: our consumers. The competition’s consumers.

Reality is usually less exclusive.

In FMCG, buyers often purchase from a repertoire of brands they already know and have tried. They may have preferences and still alternate between different options depending on the occasion, price, availability, channel or need.

Loyalty and multi-brand buying can coexist.

And for a small brand, that difference opens up a possibility. It does not always need to make someone completely abandon their usual brand. It can start by becoming an alternative that person also considers.

The question changes from: how do we make them stop choosing the competition?

to: in what situation could we become an alternative that this person would also choose?

04Thinking About Opportunity as a Decision Space

Based on this logic, I propose a tool for thinking strategically: decision space.

It is not an established academic concept. It is a way of organizing the ideas above.

A decision space is a specific situation in which a need, certain conditions and a set of alternatives come together, and where a brand has a reasonable opportunity to be considered and chosen.

It can be defined by an occasion, a need, a moment, a channel, a format or a combination of price and context.

It is not simply a demographic segment. Nor does it mean finding an empty market. An opportunity can exist within a highly competitive category.

A brand may not have the capacity to compete against a market leader in every supermarket, but it may have a particularly relevant proposition in a specific channel. It may not win every consumption occasion, but it may solve one better.

The category may be enormous. The specific decision is smaller.

05The Question Is Not Where Nobody Competes

When a small company talks about finding an opportunity, it often looks for a space without competitors.

But the absence of competition does not guarantee that demand exists.

That is why the question should not be: where does nobody compete?

The question is: where do the conditions of competition change enough for our brand to have a real opportunity?

It may be an occasion where the market leader is not necessarily the most relevant alternative. A format where our proposition makes more sense. A channel where we can compete more effectively.

Competition does not disappear. The conditions under which we compete change. And that is where an opportunity can emerge.

06Tika: Competing Differently Within a Large Category

Tika helps illustrate this idea through an enormous and familiar category: snacks.

The brand did not enter a market without competition. It entered a sector full of conventional alternatives. But its initial proposition did not try to compete in exactly the same way.

Tika began by developing a range of chips made with naturally sourced ingredients and less conventional products within the category. Its early products were built around different vegetables and, over time, the brand expanded its portfolio into other snacks and foods.

In other words, it did not stop competing in snacks. It found a different way to participate within that category.

Its initial opportunity existed within a more specific set of decisions where a differentiated proposition could have greater relevance than traditional alternatives.

Later, the company sought to expand its reach into the mass market. According to its founder, entering supermarkets and reaching a broader audience required adapting the product and reducing its original cost by approximately 22% in order to reach a more accessible price point.

The case illustrates an important idea: a company does not need to leave a large category to find an opportunity. It can find a different way to participate within it.

And then use that position as a platform to progressively expand the decisions and markets in which it can be chosen.

07Constraints Also Help Us Decide

A strategy cannot ignore a company’s real capabilities and constraints. It may face limitations in distribution, portfolio, pricing, production capacity or budget.

An agency cannot, by itself, change a company’s culture, operations or supply chain. What it can do is help a company decide how to project itself into the market based on its real capabilities and constraints.

The question can be: where do we have the best conditions to compete with what we can realistically sustain today?

Because strategy does not eliminate internal constraints. It helps decide how to compete from within them.

08Chobani: Opportunity Can Also Exist Within a Familiar Category

The U.S. market was already consuming yogurt. Chobani did not have to invent the category or convince consumers that yogurt could be part of their lives.

But it entered a market where Greek yogurt was not yet widely available in the United States. The market was dominated by large players and conventional yogurt products.

Chobani helped bring that proposition into the mass market through a combination of product, distribution through mass-market channels, accessible pricing and brand building.

The opportunity was not about finding something nobody knew. It was about participating in an existing category with a proposition that still had significant room to grow.

An opportunity can also consist of adapting, expanding or making a proposition more accessible within a familiar market.

Tika and Chobani show two different paths within a similar logic. One found a different way to enter a large category. The other helped expand a proposition that was not yet widely available.

In both cases, the opportunity did not depend on the absence of competition. It depended on how the conditions of choice changed.

09Finding an Opportunity Is Not Enough

A brand can find an attractive space and still lack the capacity to take advantage of it.

It may have an interesting proposition but fail to reach enough people, be unavailable when it is needed or be unable to sustain demand.

Market opportunity and company capability are not the same thing.

Chobani also illustrates that transition. The company reached approximately US$1.1 billion in net sales in 2013, six years after its first products entered the market. The company’s own corporate documentation attributes that expansion to a combination of product, distribution through mass channels, accessibility and the ability to build scale.

It would not be correct to attribute that growth to a single reason. But the case illustrates something important: a proposition can open an opportunity. Capability makes it possible to turn that opportunity into many more choices.

10Sweet & Coffee: Growth Also Means Being Able to Repeat

Finding a decision opportunity is not the same as turning it into growth.

A brand may identify an occasion in which its proposition is relevant and still lack the operational capacity to sustain that choice as demand increases or as the opportunity expands into new contexts.

Sweet & Coffee makes this transition easier to observe. The company opened its first location in 1997 at Mall del Sol in Guayaquil with a team of 15 people. From there, it began a gradual expansion into new neighborhoods and cities.

In 2008, it created Universidad del Café as a training structure for its employees. It would not be correct to claim that this initiative, by itself, caused the company’s growth. However, it does show that expanding the opportunities to be chosen requires developing capabilities that allow the proposition to be reproduced consistently.

Expansion is not simply about opening more locations.

It requires ensuring that the product, experience, service and availability maintain a recognizable standard across different places and moments. In other words, the brand needs to turn an initially relevant proposition into an experience that can be repeated.

An opportunity can open the door to a choice. Organizational capabilities allow that choice to happen again.

An isolated choice can validate a proposition. Repetition is what can turn it into a business.

That is why, after identifying an opportunity, the strategic question is not only how to attract more buyers, but: what do we need to build so that the brand can be chosen again, in more places and by more people, without losing what made it relevant in the first place?

11Growth Means Expanding the Opportunities to Be Chosen

Kantar’s Brand Footprint 2025 shows that brands grow when they reach more households and increase the occasions on which they can be chosen.

For a small company, the path can be more specific:

The three cases show that journey: find an opportunity → expand it → sustain it.

Tika found a different way to compete within a large category. Chobani expanded an existing proposition into the mass market. Sweet & Coffee shows that growth also requires the capabilities to sustain what works.

This is not a universal formula. It is a way of understanding how one choice can become many more.

12Making Visible Where You Can Win

Once an opportunity has been identified, the question is not what to post or what video to produce.

It is: how can communication make the brand visible, recognizable and relevant within that decision?

Content is not the strategy. It is the expression of the strategy.

That is why a small brand should ask: in which decisions do we have a real opportunity to be chosen?

The answer helps concentrate resources and identify whether the problem lies in recognition, the product, price, distribution or communication.

A brand does not need to win every choice. It needs to find where it can begin to be chosen and build the capabilities to repeat that choice and grow.

A brand grows one choice at a time.

About the author

Rafael Peralta es estratega de comunicación y director de One Headlight, estudio creativo y agencia de publicidad. Trabaja en la intersección entre estrategia, creatividad y producción para transformar objetivos de negocio en comunicación.