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The client
giffgaff has never been your typical telecoms company. Since launching, they’ve built their reputation on being the mobile network “run by you” – a community-driven approach that turned an industry known for poor customer service on its head. They’ve successfully disrupted the UK telecoms market with great-value mobile plans and recently expanded into home broadband. But success brings its own challenges.
The need for change
Having disrupted mobile and made their mark in broadband, giffgaff’s senior leadership faced a pivotal question: what comes next? They had built something special – a brand genuinely “Up to Good” with a fiercely loyal community – but they needed a fresh north star to guide their next decade of growth.
The challenge wasn’t just about finding new revenue streams. It was about enabling giffgaff to showcase their brand strengths and unique capabilities in entirely new digital spaces. How could they take their community-first approach and apply it to find new growth opportunities? And which of those opportunities would genuinely fit with their B Corp status and brand values? And crucially, which ones would their customers actually want them to pursue?
Bringing in STRAT7
giffgaff needed partners who could think bigger than traditional market research. They brought in STRAT7’s Advisory expertise to help them navigate this transformational moment.
The brief was ambitious: identify a future-focused pipeline of opportunities that would enable giffgaff to unleash its true potential over the next 10 years, whilst staying true to what makes the brand special.
Identifying opportunities
Our team started by mapping the digital landscape and how its evolution was generating new, unsolved consumer tensions. Through stakeholder interviews, market, competitor and consumer intelligence and collaborative workshops with giffgaff’s board, we explored how the brand’s distinctive assets and core tenets of value, simplicity and flexibility could translate into new sectors.
Seventeen potential sectors were rigorously assessed against four key criteria:
- Potential to differentiate versus competitors
- Fit with brand capabilities and assets
- Alignment with ESG values
This systematic approach helped move giffgaff’s leadership from a blank canvas to a focused shortlist. The process wasn’t just about identifying opportunities – it was about building internal alignment and ensuring any future moves would feel authentically giffgaff.
From this broad exploration, three high-potential opportunities emerged that warranted deeper investigation to identify the core consumer needs that giffgaff could credibly and effectively address
Implementing change
Validation was crucial. STRAT7 designed consumer workshops to test whether giffgaff’s community would actually follow them into these new territories. Through face-to-face sessions, we unpacked consumer needs, explored current solutions, and gently introduced potential giffgaff entry points to gauge credibility and perceived effectiveness.
The team then sized each opportunity, quantifying the addressable market and prevalence of unmet needs. This validation process meant giffgaff could move forward with confidence, backed by both consumer insight and commercial rationale.
The culmination was an ‘investor pack’ for giffgaff’s board – a compelling summary that brought together consumer needs, commercial opportunity, and brand alignment.
The future
The work has fundamentally shifted how giffgaff thinks about growth. They’ve moved from wondering “what’s next?” to having a clear roadmap of three prioritised opportunities, each with defined entry strategies and commercial rationale.
More importantly, the process has given giffgaff’s leadership team the confidence to think bigger whilst staying true to their values. They’re no longer just a telecoms disruptor – they’re a customer-driven brand with the blueprint to make a positive impact across multiple digital sectors.
The investor pack has opened up strategic conversations at the highest level, positioning giffgaff not just for incremental growth, but for their next chapter of transformation. With STRAT7’s support, they’ve proven that being “up to good” isn’t just good for society – it’s good for business too.
