For challenger scale-ups

The market leader just went negative.
Your challenger campaign fires in seconds.

You are a scale-up competing against a brand 10× your size. You cannot outspend them. But you can out-time them. Every scandal, data breach, or regulatory fine they face is a narrow window to acquire their disillusioned customers.

Mentione watches the market leader 24/7 and automatically activates your challenger campaigns the moment their sentiment drops — before the window closes, before your competitors react.

14-day free trial · No credit card · Cancel any time

Challenger opportunity detected

Reuters · 08:47 this morning

“ING Bank faces regulatory investigation over customer data handling in digital banking unit”

Sentiment: 14/100
Urgency: 91/100
Rule fired: “ING sentiment < 30 → activate FinCheck challenger campaign”

✓ Action executed — 08:47 (0 min delay)

  • ✓ Campaign “Switch to FinCheck — fair banking” enabled
  • ✓ Budget: €200/day → €280/day (+40%)
  • ✓ Joren notified by email at 08:47
Joren's team learned about the news from Mentione's email.
Their ads were already live.

The challenger play — explained

When a market leader has a bad news day, consumer trust dips and switching intent peaks. That is your best customer acquisition window of the month.

Why these moments work

  • 📰Trust dips immediately when news breaks — consumers start reconsidering their relationship with the brand.
  • 🔍Search volume for alternatives spikes within hours of major negative coverage.
  • ⏱️The switching window is narrow — typically 48–72 hours before the market leader issues a statement and sentiment recovers.
  • 🎯Targeted ads during this window convert 2–4× better than standard acquisition campaigns.

Industries where this works

Fintech vs. banks
Challenger insurance
Neo-energy vs. incumbents
D2C vs. legacy brands
SaaS vs. enterprise tools
Health tech vs. traditional

What happens without Mentione

Day 1–2ING regulatory story breaks. Search intent for alternatives climbs.
Day 3–5Peak switching window. Competitors who noticed start running ads.
Day 6–7ING issues statement. Sentiment recovers. Window closes.
Day 14Joren sees a Linkedin post about the ING story and realises the opportunity he missed.

With Mentione — same scenario

Day 1 · 08:47 — Story detected. Sentiment 14/100.
Day 1 · 08:47 — Challenger campaign enabled. Budget +40%.
Day 1 · 08:47 — Joren gets email. Ads already live.
Day 1–7 — Full window captured. Lower CPA. More customers.

Built for the challenger advantage

Everything you need to turn the market leader's bad days into your best acquisition moments.

Monitor the market leader 24/7

Add ING, Rabobank, or any incumbent as a monitor. Mentione watches their news around the clock — not just during office hours.

Urgency scoring, not just sentiment

A story can be negative but low-urgency. Mentione separately scores urgency 0–100, so you only fire when it actually matters.

Challenger campaign playbook

Set up your pre-built challenger ads and let Mentione activate them automatically. The creative work is done once; the timing is always perfect.

Multiple trigger conditions

Trigger on sentiment threshold, urgency score, or specific keywords like "data breach" or "regulatory fine" in the headline.

Test before you trust

Dry-run mode logs everything Mentione would have done — without touching a single campaign. Build confidence before going live.

Full audit log

Every trigger event logged with the article, sentiment score, action taken, and budget delta. Full evidence for your growth team.

The ROI case

One market leader crisis.
Dozens of new customers.

For a fintech scale-up like FinCheck, one well-timed challenger campaign during an ING data breach story can bring in 50–200 new account openings. At a typical LTV of €300–600 per customer, that is €15,000–120,000 in customer value from a single event.

Mentione Growth plan costs €199/month. The maths speaks for itself.

Conservative estimate — fintech challenger

Market leader crisis events per year4–8
New customers captured per event50–200
Customer LTV€300–600
Annual value from timed campaigns€60k–960k
Mentione Growth plan cost/year€1,908

Growth plan — €199/mo

  • 10 monitors (market leaders + competitors)
  • 2,000 mentions tracked per day
  • 10 trigger rules
  • Meta Ads + Google Ads
  • 5 team members (growth + marketing)
  • Slack + email notifications
  • Full trigger event audit log
  • 14-day free trial to start
Start free growth trial

€159/mo billed annually · save 20%

“When ING has a bad news week, that's our perfect moment. But until now we always missed those moments or reacted too late. Mentione changed that completely.”

— Growth Director, fintech scale-up, Utrecht

Challenger trigger rules — real examples

Configure these in under 10 minutes. No code, no engineers.

Fintech vs. big banks

IF ING or Rabobank sentiment < 30Enable "Switch to [Brand]" campaign + budget +40%

Insurance challenger

IF Keyword "claim denied" or "insurance scandal" + urgency > 75Activate "Fair insurance" campaign

Neo-energy vs. incumbents

IF Incumbent energy provider sentiment < 35Enable "Make the switch" campaign + budget +30%

SaaS challenger vs. enterprise

IF Market leader urgency > 80 OR keyword "outage" in headlineActivate "Reliability" campaign + retargeting budget up

The market leader's next crisis is coming.
Be ready before it does.

14-day free trial. Add the market leader as your first monitor. Set your challenger rule. Watch it in dry-run for two weeks — then go live.

No credit card required · 14-day free trial · Cancel any time