The Situation
After riding to #1 in air purification between 2019 and 2022 Breville’s share was under attack. The category had matured fast: competitors flooded in, product features equalised, and support from retailers was waining as new brands saturated the market. Outside the store, the numbers were challenging – Dyson commanded 77% share of voice while Breville enjoyed less than 5%. Without a differentiating product advantage to lean on, and with research consistently showing that brand size and SOV directly predicts market share, the strategy pointed to one conclusion: without a fundamentally different challenger approach, there was nothing to support continued growth.
The Strategy
Mr Wolf’s read was grounded in a well-evidenced principle: that creative effectiveness is the biggest lever available – and unlike brand size, it’s one a challenger can actually control. The challenger playbook is clear: find a bigger mission people can buy into, not just a product to buy, then pursue it boldly to earn genuine attention and reignite the retailers’ belief in growth.
Several missions were considered – a “chemical-free” positioning, and deepening the brand’s existing asthma and allergy territory – but sleep won out for a simple reason: 59% of Australians experience sleep issues multiple times a week, it’s a genuine, evidenced public health concern, and critically, nobody in the category was talking about it. It had, in Mr Wolf’s own words, “lots of ways to be disruptive”, and a clear link to Breville’s product range (airborne allergens and irritants directly disrupt sleep quality) meant the brand could own it credibly.
The Creative
The strategy led to “Morning People” – an affectionate send-up of the insufferably cheerful early risers everyone knows. The idea: clean air from a Breville Air Purifier means uninterrupted sleep, which means waking up genuinely, annoyingly refreshed. Breathe in all that goodness at night, and there’s no badness left in the morning. The campaign ran across Free to Air TV, BVOD, OOH, radio, digital, social and in-store — anchored by a hero spot built around exaggerated vignettes of morning people at their most insufferable, all closing on the line “Proudly making morning people. (Sorry.)”
The Reaction
“While there are many recommendations for a better night’s sleep, few people link night air quality with sleep quality. If you’re breathing air that contains irritants, not only are you more likely to battle congestion and coughing, but your body’s immune system is working overtime — which means you wake up feeling less than refreshed. Mr Wolf have developed a brilliant campaign to launch this new positioning and we’re excited to see it perform.” Candi Hart, GM Marketing, Breville Australia
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