The Villain
"You suddenly know exactly who you're not — and that's clarifying."
Naming a clear opponent (a competitor, a category, a way of working) gives the audience a fast identity decision. People rally around shared opposition more reliably than shared enthusiasm.
Same hack. Three very different choices.
The villain is a real, fair characterization — usually a category or behavior, not a specific brand.
Direct competitor named with selective comparisons that aren't quite fair.
Smear campaigns, fabricated comparison data, fake reviews of the named enemy.
A formula you can steal
Name [WHO YOU ARE NOT FOR / WHAT YOU REPLACE] → make the contrast specific → invite the audience to pick a side.
Where you've already seen this
- Apple's 'Get a Mac' campaign with John Hodgman as the PC.
- Liquid Death naming 'plastic bottles' as the villain.
- Basecamp's 'You don't need more meetings, you need fewer' positioning against Slack-style chaos.
When your category is crowded with sameness and you need a fast 'us vs them' narrative to anchor your positioning.
When your differentiation is real but quiet. Picking a fight you can't substantiate makes you look smaller than the enemy you named.
Try the trick today
Finish this sentence in 7 words: 'We exist because [the villain] keeps doing X.' If the answer is generic, you don't have positioning yet.
Free Marketing Hacked module included. See more cautionary tales and learn the playbook from the inside.
3 teardowns use this trick
Status signaling, named villains, and pristine fluency turn a project tracker into an identity decision.
How a 75-year-old brand became cool again by naming a villain ('the man your man could smell like'), breaking every ad pattern in the category, and making women the buyer.
VW spent a decade telling the world its diesels were green while shipping software that cheated emissions tests. The marketing was the cover for the fraud — and it cost $33B+ in fines.