Big Moves: Why Your Brand Doesn’t Need Another Campaign - It Needs a Change of Gear

20 Jan

Most high-tech brands and advanced manufacturers are not stuck because the tech is bad. They are stuck because they are thinking too small.

New website. New tagline. Another “high performing” LinkedIn campaign that looks good in a dashboard and does nothing to the P&L.

Meanwhile, the companies that actually rip share off their rivals are not tweaking campaigns. They are making big, lopsided decisions that tilt the field in their favour and make life harder for everyone else.

They change how people buy.
They change what “normal” looks like in the category.
They change the rules just enough that sticking with the old way starts to look dumb.

That is the whole point of Battle Lab and the Big Moves work at BBT: stop polishing the pitch deck and start hunting for the one or two moves that actually shift the odds.

Let’s look at a few brands that did this for real, then pull out the pattern and how Battle Lab helps you find your version of a big move, not just another activity plan.

1. Dropbox: Turn Users Into the Sales Channel

Cloud storage was not exactly sexy. No one woke up excited to configure sync folders.

Dropbox could have run a big awareness campaign. Instead, they made a simple call:

Reward people for bringing in more people.

They paid users in the only currency that mattered in that product: more storage space. Invite a friend, both of you get extra gigabytes. No vouchers. No points. Just more of what you were already there for.

From public case studies and interviews:

They went from about 100,000 users to roughly 4 million in around 15 months.
Around a third of new sign-ups on some days came from referrals.
Analysts estimate they avoided tens of millions of dollars in media spend because the product and incentive did the work.

What kind of move is this?

They rewired the channel. Users became the media.
They moved the money. Spend shifted from ads into product value.
They lodged a behaviour in memory. “Invite friends, get space” became part of how people explained Dropbox to each other.

For an industrial or B2B brand, the rough equivalent is something like:

“Introduce a qualified customer, and both of you get an install, training and support upgrade built into the deal.”

Not a promotion. A growth mechanism.

2. Salesforce: Pick a Villain and Redraw the Map

Around 2000, Salesforce was a small CRM vendor up against Siebel, Oracle and a stack of on-premise incumbents. They could have played the usual game: “better, faster, cheaper” product talk.

They chose something more aggressive.

They turned up outside a rival’s conference with fake protestors, “NO SOFTWARE” signs and a logo that literally crossed out the word “software”. They positioned old-school licensed software as the problem and their hosted model as the escape.

Three things happened at once:

The frame changed
The question stopped being “which CRM is best” and became “do you want to stay in the old software world or move into the new one”. Salesforce owned the new world by naming it.
A simple idea got lodged in people’s heads
“No Software” is technically wrong, but emotionally accurate. You did not have to install anything or manage servers. The detail lived behind a very simple hook.
They grabbed attention for free
Fake protests, a clear enemy and a bold logo meant people talked about them. That is mental availability in action, not theory.

In Battle Lab terms, this is a reframe + memory lock-in move:

Reframe: on-prem software is now the “old problem”.
Memory: you cannot unsee a red slash through the word “software”.

For manufacturers and tech brands, you can apply the same logic without cosplay:

“The end of unplanned stops.”
“No more mystery downtime.”
“Zero guesswork maintenance.”

Short, loaded lines that re-draw the map instead of adding another bullet to a capability slide.

3. Rolls-Royce: Stop Selling Hardware, Sell Outcomes

The old engine model was simple. Sell a jet engine, sell spare parts, send invoices when something breaks.

Rolls-Royce decided to flip that:

Airlines would no longer only buy engines. They would buy “Power by the Hour”.

Instead of a big upfront engine purchase and separate maintenance, airlines paid per hour of engine operation. Rolls-Royce took on more of the risk, monitoring and service.

Over time, this turned into a huge shift in how they made money:

Service and aftermarket revenue grew to more than half of total revenue in some reported periods.
Engines became a gateway into long, data-rich service contracts.
Rivals had to chase the model rather than compete only on unit price.

From a Battle Lab point of view, this is a classic structural move:

Change the odds. Rolls-Royce wins if the engine is reliable and efficient over time, not just at sale.
Move the money. Less capex, more ongoing opex tied to performance.
Control the choke point. The company that controls uptime, monitoring and data becomes very hard to swap out.

Translate this into industrial language and you get things like:

“Pay per tonne reliably moved, not per component.”
“Pay per defect-free unit.”
“Pay for guaranteed uptime, not just equipment.”

It is much harder for a low-cost competitor to copy that than to copy “high quality, great service”.

4. Adobe: Kill the Old Model Before It Kills You

For years Adobe sold boxed software on perpetual licences. Every so often they would launch a new version and try to drag users across.

Then they did something that annoyed a lot of people and saved their business:

They stopped selling the boxes and pushed everyone onto Creative Cloud subscriptions.

There was serious backlash at the time, but the numbers later told the story:

Recurring revenue went from a small minority to the bulk of the business.
Overall revenue growth improved from low single digits to strong double digits.
Market value climbed sharply as the model became more predictable and scalable.

Again, this is not a cosmetic tweak. It is a big move:

It changed how people paid.
It changed how often they interacted with the brand.
It changed how quickly Adobe could ship and charge for new value.

For advanced manufacturers, the analogue is obvious:

Move from one-off machine sales plus emergency service calls to a subscription that covers monitoring, analytics, training and guaranteed throughput.
Bundle hardware, software and support into one long-term performance promise.

So What Actually Counts as a “Big Move”?

Looking across these cases and the Big Moves taxonomy inside Battle Lab, a pattern shows up.

You do not have to be weird or reckless. You do have to change the conditions of the game so that:

Growth becomes easier for you.
Competing with you becomes harder or less attractive for others.

Most real big moves fall into a few buckets:

1. Reframe the game
You redefine what “good” looks like so the old default looks second-rate or risky.

On-premise software became the villain for Salesforce.
“Owning engines” became less attractive than “buying thrust hours” in aviation.

2. Move the money
You shift where and how value is paid for.

Dropbox moved money from paid media into product incentives.
Adobe and Rolls-Royce shifted from one-off purchases to long-term recurring value.

3. Rewire access and risk
You make it easier to try you than to ignore you, and you take on a type of risk others will not.

Dropbox removed the friction of trial and turned referrals into a reflex.
Rolls-Royce took on performance risk in return for long-term, high-margin relationships.

4. Lock in memory
You own a phrase, symbol or behaviour that is hard to unsee and easy to repeat.

“No Software”.
“Power by the Hour”.
Visible referral mechanics in the product.

In IGNITE terms, without the acronyms:

Make your brand easy to notice and remember in real buying moments.
Make you easy to find and stay with in the channels that matter.
Wrap this in a move that cannot be casually photocopied into the next pitch deck.

Where Battle Lab Fits

Here is the uncomfortable bit.

Most advanced manufacturers and tech brands could pull off a big move. They just do not have a safe way to explore it. Everything feels either too timid or too reckless.

Battle Lab exists to give that exploration structure.

When we run a Battle Lab engagement, we:

Map where power really sits in your market: specifiers, primes, distributors, integrators, regulators, OEMs, platforms.
Run your current model, channels, proof and brand through the Big Moves lenses: reframe, move the money, own the spec, control the choke point, rewire risk, lock in memory.
Stress-test candidate moves against the brand science:

Will this actually increase how often people think of you in real buying situations?
Does it make you easier to specify, justify and buy?
Can your team realistically execute it without blowing up operations or cashflow?

You do not walk out with a “campaign idea”.

You walk out with a shortlist of 1–3 structural plays that change something material:

How you charge.
How customers access you.
How risk is shared.
How your brand is remembered and chosen.

What This Means If You Make Things

If you build serious technology or industrial products, your problem is almost never the product.

You already know how to make something good.

The real problem is that you are still playing a small move game in a market that is being won by people willing to shift the board.

If this sounds familiar:

You are still arguing about logo tweaks.
Your pitch still leans on “innovation, quality, service”.
Your media spend still chases the same tiny group of in-market buyers.

Then your next step is not another ad. It is a big move.

We have plenty of talk about “factories of the future”.
What we need are brands of the future. Brands that are prepared to:

Reframe how value is judged.
Change how money flows.
Make themselves impossible to ignore at the exact moments that matter.

That is the work Battle Lab is built for.

References

Dropbox referral growth case study – QueueForm (2025). queueform.com
Salesforce “No Software” launch and protest stunts – UX Collective; SalesforceBen; Entrepreneur. UX Collective+2Salesforce Ben+2
Adobe Creative Cloud transition interview – McKinsey (2015). McKinsey & Company
Rolls-Royce “Power by the Hour” aftermarket services case – ICMR (2019). icmrindia.org
Big Moves and Battle Lab taxonomy – internal BBT whitepaper “Big Moves to Dominate” and MARCOM OPS & Battle Lab System.

Grant Belcher