Required Reading: Brand Superiority Requires a Strategic Enemy
In The Strategic Enemy: How to Build and Position a Brand Worth Fighting For, marketing expert Laura Ries posits that today’s most successful companies win not by claiming superiority but by boldly naming their key enemy. CRM editor Leonard Klie interviewed her to find out how companies that pick the right fight don’t just get noticed, they become unforgettable.
CRM: From a corporate standpoint, what is an enemy, and why do companies need one?
Ries: A strategic enemy is the singular category, concept, competitor, or convention a brand positions itself against. Instead of making claims your brand is better, it is best to contrast with a strategic enemy how your brand is different.
To get consumers to fight for your brand, it is easier to first focus on what you are fighting against. Without an enemy, you’re just another choice. With an enemy, you’re a movement. Having an enemy will make your brand more memorable and meaningful. Stories require conflict.
How would companies go about identifying an enemy? Can there be more than one?
All brands have lots of competitors, but they should have only one strategic enemy.
If you are first in a new category, the old category makes a great strategic enemy. But even then there could be many choices. You need to pick one.
Saying no is a great way to find your strategic enemy.
The problem is too many brands don’t have a focus, and, therefore, no clear enemy to stand against. To find an enemy you first need a focus.
Once companies have identified an enemy, what should they do with it?
The most important thing is to use the strategic enemy as your internal reference point to keep your brand focused. When everyone understands what you’re fighting against, decision making becomes clearer.
For the consumer, it is important to leverage a visual difference for your brand in opposition from the enemy. In other words, it is best to look different, too.
The best way to drive any positioning idea into the mind is with a visual hammer, a visual that communicates your distinctiveness in the market and in opposition to your strategic enemy. Your visual hammer should instantly communicate what you stand for and what you stand against without explanation.
Should companies look to defeat this enemy or is it enough to differentiate oneself from it?
Here’s the paradox: You need your enemy to thrive. The goal isn’t to destroy it; it’s to create a clear alternative and contrast from it.
For any strong position there should be an inverse position that is equally as strong. It is the reason we see the law of duality: where in the end categories end up being dominated by two strong brands. These brands tend to be opposing. The best way to take on the leader is not by being better; it is by being different.
However, sometimes you do defeat the enemy. Categories don’t live forever. After you win the battle, you are in the position of owning the category, and you need to expand and defend it from the new enemies that attack you.
What role should marketers play in taking on this enemy, and what does that combat look like?
Marketers should be the guardians of focus and use the strategic enemy as an internal compass to stay disciplined against line extension and “everybody marketing.” When the sales team wants to expand the product line, when leadership wants to appeal to a broader market, when pressure mounts to be everything to everyone, the strategic enemy keeps you focused.
Marketers must be willing to say no to opportunities that dilute the position, even when those opportunities look lucrative.
What is the ultimate benefit that companies will gain from the strategies you lay out in this book?
The courage to leverage one of the most powerful principles of positioning: the strategic enemy. And courage is exactly what’s needed, because everything in business pushes you toward the opposite.
Most companies position themselves with vague superiority claims: better quality, better service, better value. This means nothing and offends no one.
A strategic enemy requires you to take a stand, to be for something by being against something.
The safe path is fighting for share in existing categories, being a slightly better version of what already exists. The strategic enemy demands something far bolder: creating an entirely new category by defining what the old category gets wrong.
And what you gain in all this is a brand worth fighting for.