Your competitors have already left you clues

One of the most valuable skills a marketer can learn is to become a historian.

Because there’s a hell of a lot to learn from what’s already happened - particularly when you dig into the deep corners of your competitors’ history.

Here’s a one minute video of me explaining why that’s important. Click it if you’ve ever wondered what the person writing this newsletter actually looks like 😂

Today’s article is about how to put that thinking into practice.

Let’s go.

This edition of supergoods is proudly brought to you by Stickybeak 

What do buyers actually want from your next range review?

Stickybeak recently sat down with former category buyer Simon Dunn to cover what actually cuts through from the buyer's side of the desk.

Two takeaways stood out:

1. Bring them something they can’t already see.
Retailers have the sales data. What they don’t have is the why behind shopper behaviour - what people want from the category, what’s frustrating them, and what might make them switch.

2. Use the past to make a case for the future.
Buyers don’t need a lengthy recap of what already happened - they have the numbers. Use history to uncover the patterns, then spend the meeting showing them what those patterns mean for what comes next.

You can catch the whole chat in their latest webinar, From the Buyer’s Desk: Winning the Shelf in 2026.

7UP is going backwards to move forwards

7UP just gave us a pretty good example of why brand history matters.

This week, the brand unveiled its biggest US evolution in more than 15 years: a new lime-forward recipe, new positioning and a refreshed identity.

But rather than treating the past as baggage, 7UP has deliberately gone digging through its archives. The new packaging brings back a more vertical logo structure, bolder colour and the Original Uncola idea that once helped make the brand distinctive. Keurig Dr Pepper describes the design as a “modern take on iconic elements from 7UP’s past.”

This is our ‘historian’ theory in application.

Over decades, certain shapes, colours, layouts, phrases and visual structures become memory shortcuts for consumers. They accumulate recognition.

So when 7UP goes back to its past, it isn’t simply doing nostalgia.

It’s looking for equity it already owns - brand codes that have spent years being deposited into people’s memories. They’re figuring out how to juice them for the future.

So how do you dive into the past? Let’s break it down.

Step 1: Start digging

The Wayback Machine is one of my favourite strategy tools. The entire Internet’s history is archived here.

Punch in a competitor’s website and start jumping backwards through time. Look through old homepages, product pages and range pages for historic packaging.

Then screenshot everything.

Don’t overcomplicate it. Create a deck, date each image and start building a visual timeline.

Your first job is simply to build the evidence.

Go back as far as you can. Five years is useful. Ten is better. At this stage, you’re not trying to be clever.

Your first job is simply to build the evidence.

Step 2: Analyse what actually changed

Now lay the designs out next to each other and stop looking at them purely as design.

Start looking at the decisions.

Here’s a mini checklist:

• What claims appeared? Which disappeared?

• How many messages are competing on front of pack?

• Which colours, shapes, phrases or visual assets survive every redesign?

• What gets removed, only to come back a few years later?

The interesting stuff is rarely one redesign.

It’s the pattern across five of them.

That’s when you start to see what a competitor has spent years trying to own.

• You’ll see the claims they keep returning to.

• The assets they clearly believe carry equity.

• The positioning territories they’ve tested and abandoned.

• And sometimes, the distinctive brand codes they’ve thrown away in the pursuit of something “new.”

That’s where history starts becoming useful.

Step 3: Teach it

Finally: don’t file the document away.

You remember things much better when you have to explain them to someone else.

And nobody wants you to email them a 37-page competitor audit and hope they absorb it in their own time.

Book 30 minutes. Walk your team through what changed.

Debate why it might have changed. Point out the patterns.

Then, most importantly, finish by asking:

So what does this mean for what we do next?

Because becoming a historian isn’t about obsessing over the past.

It’s about understanding what has already been tried, what has accumulated equity and what the category keeps repeating - so you can make better decisions about the future.