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Want to grab your customer’s attention? Don’t just tell them how great you are. Tell them the enemy that you stand against — and fight to defeat.
While unsuccessful entrepreneurs obsess over what makes their brand special, successful entrepreneurs instead ask a more powerful question to transform their business into an unstoppable brand: What am I fighting against?
This is the concept of the “strategic enemy,” which I wrote my new book about, and it is the most powerful yet underutilized tools in brand building. A strategic enemy is the oppositional force that your brand or category stands against. It could be a competitor, category, convention, or concept.
Identifying a strategic enemy will force you to clearly define what you are not, which will enable consumers to more easily understand what you are.
Here’s the bottom line: To build a successful brand, you need to be perceived as first in something — by either pioneering a new category or narrowing your focus. If you examine history, almost every successful brand story begins this way. They focused and strongly positioned themselves against a clear strategic enemy:
- Colgate popularized toothpaste in a tube. Enemy: tooth powders.
- Salesforce popularized CRM in the cloud. Enemy: software.
- Tropicana popularized orange juice not from concentrate. Enemy: frozen concentrate.
- Oatly popularized oatmilk. Enemy: cow’s milk.
- Uber popularized ride-sharing. Enemy: taxis.
Why a Vague Positioning Fails
Most brands have a positioning statement buried in a brand book, but these statements are typically written to serve as an umbrella covering everything the company does. That’s not positioning, that’s a laundry list.
Positioning is a strategy to deal with the mind, and the mind craves simplicity, clarity and contrast. Vagueness won’t cut it in today’s over-communicated marketplace. Successful positioning strategies create clear distinctions in the mind of the consumer. Positioning against a strategic enemy makes your position not just sharper and more memorable — it energizes and motivates consumers to rally for your cause.
Having a strategic enemy isn’t about creating artificial conflict or claiming your brand is right while the enemy is wrong. The enemy is about acknowledging a fundamental truth: consumers are making choices whether you like it or not. Your job is to set up that choice so it’s clear, simple and easy to make.
The New Category Advantage
Every new category should position itself against an existing category by treating it as the enemy. When you can relate your new category name to the previous one, the contrast becomes even more powerful. The iPhone was positioned as the first “smartphone” — a brilliant category name that instantly implied all other cellphones were, by comparison, “dumb.”
The problem is too often that a company uses the same brand name in the new category, which leaves no opportunity to strongly position it against the enemy. Cottonelle can’t exactly run ads saying their wet toilet paper is superior, and their dry toilet paper is inadequate. This is why entrepreneurs often become the source of breakthrough brand successes — they have the freedom to pick the right fights.
Sean Riley was just this type of entrepreneur. His brand Dude Wipes declared war on toilet paper and today sells over $350 million a year.
He found the inspiration for Dude Wipes during a shopping trip. “I was living with all my buddies in a big Animal House apartment, and I was responsible for buying some of the goods one week,” Riley recalls. “I went to Sam’s Club, got toilet paper, paper towels, and a bunch of baby wipes, and stocked the bathrooms.”
“You have to remember, these are guys eating tons of burritos, drinking tons of beers like you’re partying after college — there are lots of bathroom breaks being taken. The baby wipes just came in handy and everyone got hooked on them right away. That was kind of when the light bulb product moment went on.”
Riley wondered: “Why are guys using baby wipes and loving them? Why isn’t there anything else on the market? Why isn’t there something flushable with cool branding?”
While there were plenty of options of flushable wipes for adults available in the aisle, all these were line extensions of traditional toilet paper brands. Kleenex Cottonelle FreshCare Flushable Cleaning Cloths was the first moist toilet tissue in the market. Yes, that was the full name — and one only a big company would come up with! Launched in the early 2000s, the messaging promoted using these new flushable cloths along with Cottonelle toilet paper. It was dual-product approach aimed at promoting both dry and moist products together.
Soon after, Charmin responded with its own line of products called Charmin Freshmates. Like FreshCare, they were marketed as a complement to traditional toilet paper. This made sense for the company… but not for the consumer! The line extension’s name and weak messaging didn’t generate any excitement for the category. And it certainly didn’t resonate with Sean and his buddies.
Dude Wipes was different. It took on traditional toilet paper as the enemy. Their message was unambiguous: “Dry toilet paper doesn’t cut it. Send toilet paper back to the Stone Age.”
This wasn’t just provocative marketing — it was strategic positioning that toilet paper companies couldn’t counter without undermining their core business. It also elevated the importance of the category itself.
Dude Wipes took something many felt taboo talking about and made it cool. They also focused on men, not women. Unlike women, men only use toilet paper when they go number two, making them ideal targets for the product. A man living alone can survive with Dude Wipes alone in the bathroom.
And while Dude Wipes didn’t invent the product, they won the mind of the consumer with a narrow focus, great name and bold branding against an enemy. Today, Dude Wipes is giving Kimberly-Clark and P&G a run for their money in the bathroom.
But what about women? Sean told me one of the most common questions he is asked is when he plans to launch Lady Wipes. His answer: Never. Smart strategic thinking. There is power in being focused. There is power in the name Dude Wipes. When ladies do a number two, they need the strength of a Dude Wipe to clean up. I have no doubt the brand resonates just as well with female buyers as much as it does with men. I do Dude Wipes.
The Strategic Enemy: Lessons for Entrepreneurs
To find your own strategic enemy, follow this formula:
1. Make the Fight Specific: Successful strategic enemies aren’t abstract concepts or unrealistic foes—they’re tangible things or ideas that customers can relate to and visualize as an enemy. “Dry toilet paper” is something everyone understands and has experience with.
2. Stay Focused on Your Fight: The temptation to expand into adjacent categories is strong, especially when you’re successful. But maintaining focus on your core enemy keeps your brand sharp and your message clear. Back in 2019, Dude Wipes launched Dude Deodorant and Dude Bodywash. Luckily, they quickly realized the error and discontinued these products to focus only on Dude Wipes to defeat toilet paper.
3. Embrace the Right Kind of Controversy: Take a strong stand. Dude Wipes drive attention, discussion and avid fans because they are willing to make bold claims that established brands couldn’t or wouldn’t make. To rally against an enemy brings people together and builds a brand worth fighting for.
This essay was excerpted from Laura Ries’s new book, Strategic Enemy.