Why Every Brand Needs an Enemy: Different, Not Better
Your marketing isn't failing because it's bad. It's failing because it's polite.
It agrees with everyone. It offends no one. It stands for nothing at all. Then you wonder why the market strolls straight past it like a charity collector outside Greggs.
Here's the fix. It's old. It's simple. Most brands are too scared to use it.
Get yourself an enemy.
Not a person. Not the firm down the road. An idea you're willing to fight in public. In this piece I'll show you:
Why the Mad Men era forced brands to be bang on, and what we lost when that pressure vanished
How endless tweaking turns good businesses into wallpaper
Why naming your brand enemy gives you the conviction to stand out and stay remembered
The Mad Men Knew Something You've Forgotten
Go back a few decades. Smoke-filled rooms. Big lunches. Bigger egos.
Media was limited. You had TV. You had cinema. You had print. That was more or less your lot. A campaign cost tens of thousands of pounds, and that was proper money back then. If you delivered a shit campaign and it bombed, you were stuffed. No second go. No "let's A/B test the thumbnail." Just a very awkward phone call and a P45.
So the research mattered. You dug into the client. You dug into the business. You found out what it was really about.
Three things had to line up:
Market. Who you were talking to.
Message. What you were saying.
Media. Where you said it to make the biggest dent.
Get one wrong and the whole thing fell over.
And because your customer was going to see that ad again and again, it couldn't be boring. It had to be relevant. Nobody wants to sit through the same dull advert for the fortieth time before the main feature.
So we did something clever. We named the brand enemy. We made it crystal clear what the brand stood for and what it stood against. Complete clarity. No confusion. Add a bit of humour and we were there.
It worked then. It works now.
The pressure made the work sharp. Remove the pressure and the work goes soft.
Then the Tweaking Started
Today, clients have a luxury the Mad Men never had. They can change their message whenever they fancy.
So they do. Constantly.
They tweak the tagline. They take glossier pics. They change the brand colours because someone's nephew said teal is "very now." They rebuild the website. They post more. They chase the algorithm like it owes them money. And I could go on.
Now anyone with a phone and a free app can knock out an AI video before the kettle's boiled. Brilliant. More noise, made faster, by more people who don't know what they're trying to say.
The result is shitty advertising. Made by amateurs. Seen by nobody. Then the brand flops and everyone blames the platform.
It's not the platform. It's the message. Most businesses don't have a visibility problem. They have a clarity crisis.
This is gutless marketing. Safe, polished, and saying bugger all. It's the voice in the meeting that whispers "let's not alienate anyone" and calls it strategy.
Here's the bit that stings. Polished is not powerful. Polite gets deleted. Safe is a slow death.
More tweaking won't save a muddy message. It just spreads the mud faster.
Why Every Brand Needs an Enemy
Every great story has a villain. Luke had Vader. Rocky had Drago. Your brand has... a slightly updated colour palette.
That's the problem.
Without an enemy, your story has no tension. No tension, no attention. No attention, no sale. The human brain works like a nightclub bouncer. Only four things get past the door: threats, novelty, personal relevance, and emotion. "We offer high-quality service at competitive prices" isn't on the list. It's not getting in. It's not even in the queue.
An enemy changes that overnight. It gives your message a pulse.
Your Enemy Isn't the Firm Down the Road
Let me be clear. Your enemy is not a competitor.
Fight a competitor and you're playing the "better" game. Cheaper. Faster. Shinier. That's a race with no finish line, because someone will always undercut you, outspend you, or out-shiny you. Better joins the queue. It competes on price and gets forgotten by lunchtime.
Your enemy is an idea. A belief. A way of doing things that's hurting your customer.
For me, it's safe marketing. Gutless, committee-approved, please-everyone marketing. I've spent 30 years inside brands watching it quietly kill good businesses. I wrote a marketing textbook in 1996. I've spent the three decades since tearing up its safe principles. So yes, I know this enemy personally. We've history.
Yours might be:
The jargon that makes your industry impossible to understand
The "that's how it's always been done" attitude everyone else hides behind
The hidden fees, the slow service, the box-ticking, the shrug
Name it. Then stand against it, loudly.
That's Different, Not Better. You don't beat the competition. You make them irrelevant, because you're the only one in the room actually fighting for something.
BROAD = Relevant to No One = INVISIBLE
Write that on a Post-it. Stick it on your monitor. Tattoo it somewhere tasteful.
When you try to speak to everyone, you speak to no one. The message gets so wide it goes thin. Thin enough to see through. Thin enough to scroll past.
An enemy narrows things down in the best way. It tells the right people, "I'm on your side." It tells the wrong people, "This isn't for you." Both are useful. Some will love you. Some will loathe you. Nobody will forget you.
That's the trade. Swap broad and invisible for sharp and remembered.
If you're not clear what you're against, nobody's clear what you're for.
How to Pick a Fight (Properly)
Picking a fight doesn't mean picking on people. It means picking a side.
Here's how I'd start.
1. Find What Makes Your Customers Furious
What do they moan about down the pub? What makes them roll their eyes at your industry? That frustration is gold. Your enemy is usually hiding right there.
2. Name It Plainly
Give it a name your customer would actually use. Not "suboptimal service delivery." Try "being treated like a ticket number." If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.
3. Show Conviction, Courage, and Empathy
Be brave about what you stand against. Be warm with the people who agree with you. You're not ranting. You're rallying. Your customer should feel like you've been reading their diary.
Then stick to it. Every ad. Every post. Every pitch. No more random acts of marketing. No more starting from a blank page every time a new campaign lands on the calendar. The enemy stays the same. Your conviction stays the same. That consistency is what makes you uncopyable.
One enemy. One clear stand. Said again and again until the market can't miss it.
Stand for Nothing, and You're Nobody
This is the hard bit. The bit that makes founders shuffle in their seats.
If you don't know exactly what you're fighting against, you don't know what you're standing up for. And if you're not standing up for anything, you stand for nothing.
Brands and businesses that stand for nothing get ignored. Every time. Whatever their size. Whatever their budget. Whatever the colour of their logo this week.
You've got guts. I know you have. You built a business from scratch. You've questioned the rules your whole life. Then somewhere along the way you swallowed the safe playbook for your own brand.
Time to spit it out.
Unless you take a stand, you're fighting no one. No idea. No nothing. And then you're a nobody.
I don't tweak. I don't tinker. I transform. And it always starts with the same question: who, or what, are you fighting?
Not Sure Who Your Enemy Is? Let's Fix That
You don't need more content. You don't need another rebrand. You need one true thing, said without apology, to the right people.
Grab the free CreActivist Playbook at www.doingitdifferently.com.
Find your edge. Name your enemy. Build a brand the market can't ignore.
Pick a fight. Build something uncopyable. Different, Not Better.
"Stand for everything,the crowd scrolls straight past your name.Pick a fight. Be seen."
John Atkinson, The CreActivst Marketer who is Doing it Differently
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