🎧 Play while reading: The Enemy - D.O.A.

Alcohol-free beer sucks. It tastes like cardboard. 🤮

See what I did there?

You probably assumed I'm a staunch advocate for the real stuff. Boozy, full-strength. Likely because you think I believe it tastes better and has a kick to it.

It's quite possible I also think regular beer sucks and tastes like crap. But did you instinctually question that?

Now imagine I'd opened with: "I love beer. It tastes great."

Booooring 🥱

Both statements communicate the same underlying idea about what I stand for. One was monstrously more effective.

The reason sits inside the way human psychology works.

• “I love beer” → no contrast → low signal → forgettable

• “Alcohol-free beer sucks” → high contrast → attention spikes → memorable

We are hardwired to prioritise threats, problems, and aversions. Negativity bias. It's why all news is bad news. Shark! Fire! War!

It demands processing. The brain questions is this a threat I should know about?

But that’s not everything.

I didn’t just state information I want you to associate with me. You filled in the blank.

This is the self-generation effect. People trust and remember conclusions they arrive at themselves more than ones handed to them.

Then there’s what I call the “ying and yang effect”.

The brain biases toward accepting opposites as universal truths. Like a natural law of balance. Hot and cold. Day and night. Odd and even. Light and dark. Black and white. Big and small.

As soon as something exists, the mind creates room for a perceived opposite. These open holes represent opportunities for brands to fill with their idea.

Would alcohol-free beer exist as a concept without beer first? Even under a different name like “malted water”. No way.

This isn’t just because the technological timeline worked out that way. The mind allows this to exist because it matches as an opposite. That’s the distinction.

Beer itself emerged as a counter-balance to water.

This reflects philosopher Hélène Cixous's work, who explored how oppositions often shape the way we think about the world. They function as a mental shortcut for defining the boundaries of our experience.

She went further too — pointing out that the mind doesn't just embrace opposites as neutral counterparts, it ranks them. One is perceived as superior to the other.

Then there’s the tribal layer.

We evaluate claims based on what they signal about identity and belonging. The moment I say “alcohol-free beer sucks,” I’m not only expressing an opinion, I’m drawing a line between people who agree and people who don’t.

This invites debate. Is alcohol-free beer actually beer?

Answer: it doesn’t matter.

Both sides of the debate drive productive attention for each. The fence-sitters get pulled in by the theatre.

What does all this brain boffinry mean?

It's a stack of psychological effects, working together, powerful enough to take a brand from nowhere to somewhere in the mind of the market. A positioning cheat code.

To do it, you need to define what you are not. An opposite.

And what is an opposite of what you stand for?

The enemy.

Declaring one can mean you avoid turning up D.O.A.

Strategic Enemy

Many companies and their brands implicitly or explicitly say they stand against things.

Their mistake is picking too many… high-prices, low quality, unreliable, slow. Whatever the obvious anti-buying considerations in the categories they operate are.

A laundry list of adversaries. That sometimes includes competitors.

The problem is, the more companies say they stand against stuff, the less believable and noticeable it is. They dilute each other. And they usually get wrapped up in some all encompassing term that attempts to address all of them, but means nothing.

There’s an adtech company called Teads that has fallen into this trap. It’s stock price has dived 78% in the past year. 96% in the past 5 years. From a market cap well above $1bn down to $80m today.

They offer a range of products. Their homepage recently said “The Global Platform for Elevated Outcomes”.

That claim is trying to cover all bases by saying they can do everything for everyone. Sounds impressive… but it’s void of substance. Peacocking without the payoff.

The opposite of this is “non-elevated outcomes”. Which translates to “mediocre results”. That’s not a rallying battlecry to defeat, it’s stating the obvious. It’s table stakes, not a differentiator.

This isn’t just a case of weak website copy. Meaningless messaging often reflects a lack of direction that runs throughout the entire business.

There’s no clear enemy they help their customers overcome. There’s no unifying theme between all of their offerings. There’s no cohesive idea unifying the company.

The inverse should be true. They should be populating a unique idea in the prospect’s mind that says “buy in this context”.

They used to have it. But now it’s gone. Teads today is the result of two former category leaders — each with a strong positioning idea — merged into one company that no longer has any.

Because of the absence of a strong idea, they have become harder to mentally file. For prospects. For partners. For press. For Wall Street.

What is Teads in 2026?

Pass. 🤷

When that happens people lose sight of why they exist. Why they should buy into it.

What they need is what every company that needs an enemy must choose.

One enemy. A strategic enemy.

This would instantly clarify to the mind of the market what journey they’re on and why that’s valuable to customers.

What is a “strategic enemy”?

Laura Ries wrote the book on it. Literally 👇

We are taught from childhood we should avoid having enemies. That we'd be better off being nice and not causing any trouble. Implicitly, enemies are something that happen to you. Not something you create by exerting your force on another.

This approach flips that.

It prescribes pointing at a single adversary and declaring it your enemy.

Yes… that includes YOU 🫵

Laura Ries makes the case clearly: “The mind understands opposition faster than superiority. When you define what you are against, it becomes clear what you are.”

It is also instantly believable. Claiming what you refuse to do is met with less skepticism than claiming what you can do.

Your positioning idea — the core mental space you occupy — by default becomes the opposite of your enemy.

Let that sink in.

If you declare an enemy on the basis it’s “big”, your idea becomes “small”.

This is what VW famously pulled off as a relative outsider to the US car market during the mid-20th century. When they were a punk brand going against category norms.

By positioning the Beetle as a “tough little” car, it repositioned every American car brand as wobbly land yachts.

Take a close look. This is hall of fame level positioning execution 👇

Attention is focussed on a single opposing concept, like this, that becomes yours to own.

It is adopted by the mind like blotting paper absorbing a new colour of ink. With your name on it.

For this reason it's one of the most powerful tools to position a brand in the mind of the market. And in the AI and social feed era, it's never been more needed.

Algorithms, the press, and just about everyone, thrive on controversy. Controversy stimulates engagement and word of mouth.

But this is not rage baiting. It's productive conflict.

The purpose of declaring an enemy isn't to be hateful or attention-seek for the sake of it. The target is the underlying point-of-view.

It’s not personal. It’s a battle of ideas.

That's the difference between productive conflict and hollow provocation. One surfaces a new, valuable way of doing something for an audience that cares. The other is performative outrage.

“The enemy is not wrong or bad. It’s just different.” — Laura Ries

It’s a debate… small German runaround or big American gas guzzler?

The contrast help prospects see both options more clearly, forcing a choice between the two where one didn’t exist before.

That means brawling is beneficial.

When punches are thrown in both directions, this is perfect. You want to bait the enemy or whatever empowers it. You want to get smacked in the face. 

Your perspective will be amplified by established companies and stakeholders reacting in front of everyone. This has a disproportionate advantage for the underdog challenging the status quo. Startups.

Punk Startups That Declared Strategic Enemies

The three following examples are featured in The Strategic Enemy (which has a mountain of them). Each one picked an enemy and held the line…

Uber

☠️ Enemy: taxi cabs

Co-founders Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp got stranded trying to hail a cab after a conference. The idea: what if you could request a ride from your phone?

They launched as UberCab — until the San Francisco Transit Authority sent a cease-and-desist, forcing them to drop "Cab" from the name.

Accidentally brilliant. With "Cab" gone, they could declare taxi cabs the enemy without having cab in their own name.

But why were cabs the enemy? Uncertainty.

Unpredictable wait times, opaque pricing, and a phone line that may or may not get answered.

Uber stood for the opposite: convenience.

Book from your pocket, track the ride in real time, know the price upfront.

The Uber vs. cab debate provided all the publicity they needed to build the brand.

Salesforce

☠️ Enemy: software

Salesforce pointed at software as the enemy. Hard-install software, that is. The method every CRM company was using to provide its services at the time. Salesforce didn't say it was better. It said the existing model was broken.

But why was it the enemy? Friction.

Hard-installed software chained teams to specific devices, required lengthy installations, created IT dependencies, and remained frozen in time until the next disc arrived

Salesforce stood for the opposite: Freedom

Accessible from any laptop or PC, nothing to install, and a product that shipped new features continuously.

Dominant incumbents like Siebel fought back, legitimising Salesforce's idea. This built an entirely new category and rendered the old one extinct.

Dude Wipes

☠️ Enemy: toilet paper

The founders of Dude Wipes didn't invent the flushable wipe. They just positioned it against the right enemy. Dry toilet paper doesn't cut it for bros who chow down on spicy burritos.

But why was it the enemy? Smeary mess.

Dry paper that moves the problem around more than it solves it, leaving the victim in a sore state.

Dude Wipes stood for the opposite: refreshingly thorough.

A flushable wipe built for heavier-duty situations.

“Traumatizing toilet paper” isn’t a line Charmin could ever use. Which is exactly the point. A focused enemy provides a sharp point-of-view that established and over-extended brands can’t copy.

Not just for the Ubers of the world

Punk startups can declare an enemy and flourish in any category.

B2C or B2B. From social apps to legaltech to medical appliances. It doesn’t matter. Positioning against a strategic enemy is not just the domain of edgy consumer brands like Uber and Dude Wipes.

Salesforce is a prime example. CRM is a “business-serious” category compared to ride-hailing or wet wipes or. Yet, their positioning made it interesting. Even to those who don’t use CRMs. The press lapped up the tension.

To evidence this further, let’s take a quick look at another B2B example in an industry that — to most people — is invisible infrastructure.

Remember I was talking about the adtech company Teads, earlier? Prior to the merger, it started life as Outbrain. Their customers were web publishers and advertisers.

Outbrain

☠️ Enemy: banner ads

Outbrain pioneered the content recommendations category. Those "around the web" links you see across the internet.

They declared banner ads the enemy. Not a specific competitor. The entire category of banner advertising itself, which dominated the internet at the time.

But why was it the enemy? Interruption.

Pop-ups, animations, spammy advertisers. Ads that disturbed content consumption.

Outbrain stood for the opposite: native.

Sponsored content recommendation links that matched the reading experience rather than fighting it.

Articulated with striking clarity and consistency, the contrast shocked the mind of the market into noticing it.

This enemy gave them a focussed positioning idea, and from it a lighthouse to guide their path, which grew to create $1BN+ in shareholder value.

How To Pick A Strategic Enemy

This all leads to one simple question: how do you pick a strategic enemy?

That topic deserves its own newsletter. Which I will write next.

In the meantime, remember…

Back in your inbox soon. 🤘

Martin

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