Field notes from real projects – plus the research that proves why this works.
In todays markets, neutral brands vanish quickly. The companies that win often define a clear enemy: not a person, but a problem, the wasteful status quo, the bloated process, the complacent “good enough.” That single move creates narrative gravity, rallies customers, and sharpens real execution.
Why “naming the enemy” works (some science in simple language)
- Stories beat facts: People remember a well-told story far more than a list of boring features, no matter how good they are. Stanford’s Jennifer Aaker puts it bluntly: stories are remembered up to 22 x more than facts alone. womensleadership.stanford.edu
- Narratives persuade: Modern psychology calls it narrative transportation: when we’re absorbed in a story, our beliefs shift toward it. That’s not just marketing folklore, it’s a repeatedly validated effect in peer-reviewed research. www.researchgate.net/publication/
- Common enemy → cohesion: Teams and communities align much much faster when there’s a credible outside threat to together push against. That dynamic (the “common enemy effect”) is observed across human groups and even far beyond. You should use it ethically, but use it. ScienceDirect
- Consistency multiplies revenue: Once you define the enemy, you can keep your message consistent for a long period of time. And consistency isn’t just cosmetic: studies report revenue lifts of ~23% to up to 33% when brand presentation is coherent across touchpoints. d2slcw3kip6qmk.cloudfront.net
Proof it isn’t just theory (iconic cases that fought the “old way”)
- Domino’s “Oh Yes We Did.” They named their enemy, their own bad pizza and the industry’s complacency and rebuilt the product in public. Result was: +14.3% U.S. same-store sales in Q1 2010 (an industry record at the time) and +9.9% for the full year. That’s what happens when you make the villain explicit and fix the problem behing it. thearf-org-unified-admin.s3.amazonaws.com
- Challenger brands, by design: The best “challengers” always frame a monster which is: waste, opacity, arrogance and than invite customers to defeat the monsters with them. This is a codified playbook, not just a lucky accident. thechallengerproject.com
From the field examples: how we run this with our clients?
With some of our clients across Croatia, Italy, EU, UK and beyond, the practical pattern is repeatable:
- Identify the real villain in the story: And it’s almost never just “competitors.” It’s friction that steals value: manual re-entry, dark and hidden fees, slow lead response, data locked in PDFs. If customers would happily burn it and solve that problem and are willing to fight it with you, it qualifies.
- Name it in plain words: No poetry, no buzzwords – just name it simply so people and your leads can easily understand it and remember it
- Show the before/after in one screen: One graph, one clip, or a side-by-side that makes the old way look visibly costly or way worse
- Build a consistent message spine: Website H1, hero video, sales deck opener, onboarding email… it all needs to start with the same enemy and the same promise. (This is where the revenue lift from consistency compounds.) d2slcw3kip6qmk.cloudfront.net
- Instrument the fight: We track three leading indicators: clarity (message recall in user tests), momentum (time-to-first-value), and signal (reply rate/CTR on “enemy-framed” subject lines) – if they’re flat, the enemy isn’t sharp enough and it needs modifications.
What usually changes fastest: lead quality goes up (people self-select into your movement), sales cycles shorten (less “what do you do?”), and internal teams finally talk about the same thing.
Counterpoints:
- Don’t just invent a fake villain: Customers can smell theater, you must tie the enemy to a real cost (time, money, risk or something else that is the real problem)
- Don’t polarize for sport: Trust now drives purchase for 81% of consumers; cheap outrage can buy clicks but erode long-term credibility of your business so you need to be precise, not just loud. Edelman+1
- Regulated sectors need nuance: In healthcare/finance, frame the enemy as process waste or data latency, not people or institutions because you are not a political movement, but a business movement
- Consistency beats volume: One enemy, who is the same – everywhere.
If your homepage, first sales slide, and onboarding email don’t all name the same enemy, you’re asking buyers to assemble your story themselves – in other words you are not telling them the story. And they won’t assemble it by themself. You need to anchor the conflict, keep the language human, and measure impact like an engineer. The moment your market and customers sees what you’re fighting against, they’ll see why you’re worth following and supporting. https://business-only.eu/izgradnja-mocnog-brenda-snaga-neprijatelja/
