S06.EP17 - The Strategic Enemy: Why Great Brands Need a Villain with Laura Ries

0:00And the most important aspect is the power of saying no. You know, most companies are running around looking for what else to get into, what to say yes to, when in fact the most powerful brands are done by just doing the opposite of that, by saying no to something, by not doing something, by giving that to somebody else. And that's okay because that makes your position stronger. And the ultimate success in business is not building a brand, it's building a category and dominating it.

0:29Hello and welcome to Just Branding. The only podcast dedicated to helping designers and entrepreneurs grow brands. Here are your hosts, Jacob Cass and Matt Davies. All right, before we jump in, if you're serious about mastering branding and building a thriving creative business, the Brand Builders Alliance is for you. Inside, you'll get live masterclasses, mentorship from our eight resident coaches, a stacked resource vault and a global network of brand builders who actually get it. If you're done winging it alone and are ready to scale with structure, support and serious momentum, head over to joinbba.com and get on the waitlist.

1:16That's joinbba.com. Now let's get into the show. Hi folks, welcome to this episode of Just Branding. We're super thrilled to have the amazing Laura Rees with us for this episode. Laura Rees is a globally recognized marketing strategist and best-selling author. I came across her personally many years back with her book, 22 Immutable Rules of Branding, which she co-wrote with her father, Al Rees. She continues her father's legacy and today as chairwoman of Rees, the firm where she has helped Fortune 500 and ambitious startups win through bold, focused brand positioning for over 30 years. She's a sought-after speaker, trusted advisor, and author of a new book, The Strategic Enemy, which helps brands of any size build a position and a business worth fighting for.

2:17We are absolutely honored, Laura, for you to be with us on the show. Welcome. Well, thank you so much. I'm so excited to talk about my favorite topic, branding. You're on the right podcast. Absolutely. So I want to just dive straight in. Like, first of all, a lot of us in the game who've been around a while, as I've sort of mentioned in the introduction, will have come across your work. But talk to us about this new book. Like, what inspired you to write The Strategic Enemy? Well, I mean, all the books have come from wanting to do the best work for clients, right? So in consulting with clients, you're trying to build and develop their positioning strategy.

2:59And part of it is doing the strategy. And then the other really important part is convincing them to do it. And one of the best ways to do that is to have these. That's why we've written books with laws and principles. Because if you can explain those rules and then show them examples of how it's applied in other situations, it's much more easy to understand and get them to accept and go with the strategy you're suggesting. So, you know, most times you're always talking with the client about, you know, them, them, them, right? They only want to think about themselves. Yet many times it was, what are we going against?

3:33How can we contrast this to something else? And that became much more important. And that was very helpful in selling it to them. And not only that, it was witnessing examples. And one of the greatest was the iPod. I remember when the iPod came out and it was truly, you know, very revolutionary. but it faced a very important strategic enemy because at the time, all the flash drive players that were cheap, that was dominating. The Rio, you're probably too young, but I had a Rio. And what did Steve Jobs do? He created a new category called the hard drive music player. It was more expensive. This was going to be hard to sell, but what did he do?

4:13He positioned it against the enemy and said, you have a thousand songs in your pocket, that oversimplified message. and it was so powerful it brought the company back in 2006 they named it the gadget of the century which i think was a little bit premature but it certainly did put apple back on the path of being one of the most dominant you know companies in the world apples are the master of that right like i i tend to remember that do you remember the ads that was like mr pc versus mr mac that's literally versus mac yeah that's what you're talking about like and i i often think like that was like such a genius move because everyone was like pcs everyone had windows everything was kind of moving that direction and then steve jobs through his genius was like let's actually position ourselves as the cool young hip kind of like offering that was actually easier better more sophisticated and stronger than that and then literally just played off against that so you know like did that come later or was that before the ipod i can't remember it It was around the same time.

5:18Same time, right? It was also a very important example because, listen, it also, it didn't necessarily put the enemy down. It was the contrast. And actually, both sides are super, you know, effective, super successful. I mean, even the, you know, the PC side came roaring back because, you know, PCs and work and Microsoft and all of those things are also incredibly, you know, successful out there. There's no one way to do anything and there's no one brand for everybody. When you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one. And so by picking that focus, narrowing in on something and showing a contrast is much more effective.

5:58Love that. Absolutely love that. Great example. So in terms of writing The Strategic Enemy, you mentioned doing the best work for clients. You've mentioned some examples. But what gave you that sort of spark to kind of do it? Was there a moment like in your life though, you were like, I've got to write a book about this. Like this is needed. Well, I mean, it just, you know, I was, I was thinking about concepts, you know, when you, you want to, you know, you're in the midst of thinking about a book idea, you have a couple out there. And I really gravitated toward this because I think it was so important and it was so relevant today, but there is something that really pushed me over the edge.

6:35And it was remembering that my father's concept of positioning used a strategic enemy. And when that memory hit me, and at that time, my dad had passed, of course, and so very emotional. But I was like, holy smokes, of course, I have to write this book. It actually brings everything full circle in terms of the core concept of positioning and how the strategic enemy, which has kind of been in the books in small places, but it wasn't ever really fully flushed out and really brought to light so that people can make it truly actionable. And the story was, my father ran a tiny B2B agency in New York City in the 60s, Mad Men era of advertising, and they wanted to establish their own brand and they wanted to do their best work for clients.

7:22And so the idea was, well, what was popular at the time? Well, it's kind of still popular today. Everyone claiming to be better, right? We're the better this, we're the better that. And not only that, it was the heyday of creativity, right? All you needed was an okay product, but the success would come from the creativity of the advertising. And what happened was, as time went on and advertising was everywhere, that effectiveness plummeted. And you saying that you're great is not exactly believable. So his core concept was to have every ad center on a rock, an idea that was indisputable. And that coalesced into becoming the idea of owning a position in the mind.

8:03He loved it. You could call it a positioning. And that's where he and Jack Trout built on the concept. It took off in the 70s. But they didn't just talk about positioning. They strongly went against creativity. And they made a big splash about that in their articles talking about the concept. And my dad, I mean, I remember him telling me it wasn't that he didn't like creativity. I mean, he did. He was in advertising. But you needed to knock out the enemy before you could establish your position for your brand. And that was the position for positioning. that it wasn't the creativity of your advertising that builds your brand.

8:36It was the position that you could own in the mind of the consumer. And that it wasn't just what you wanted to communicate, but you first had to start your strategy with what the mind was willing to accept and believe. And that's still the most important critical aspect of any branding out there. You can't force your way into a mind. The hardest thing is to get into a mind, to get people to listen to you, believe you, and to change your mind, forget about it. That's almost impossible. But that's the critical element. And when I remember that story and I wrote the introduction, it just became so much more powerful and is also just a strong memory for my family.

9:15Amazing. Amazing story and beautiful. And I think it's smart, right? Because when you think about positioning just generally, if you take a category, for example, the very fact that you're saying, we're going to own this hill, we're going to plant our flag on this hill ultimately generally does say we are we are therefore not going to stand for these other kind of areas which we're going to allow our competitors in effect to take we're going to stand for this and they're the enemy because of these reasons so it makes an awful lot of sense to my mind anyway to uh to think about that from a brand positioning perspective so um quick question so let's move let's move into kind of like some examples like you've mentioned Apple.

10:02Have you got any kind of other examples where people have been successful in the past, I imagine, by positioning themselves by fighting against something? Sure. I mean, most companies have this element, if you look back in the history, particularly how the brand was built. And the most important aspect, and you kind of touched on it, and I have a whole chapter on it, is the power of saying no. You know, most companies are running around looking for what else to get into, what to say yes to, when in fact, the most powerful brands are done by just doing the opposite of that, by saying no to something, by not doing something, by giving that to somebody else.

10:39And that's okay, because that makes your position stronger. And the ultimate success in business is not building a brand, it's building a category and dominating it. It's the category that people are really excited about. It's the brand is how we verbalize that category. So when you're the pioneer of a new category, it's the old category that is your enemy, natural enemy. You have, for example, Tesla, right? They pioneered the electric car market, they dominate in the mind, and they very clearly can make gasoline cars the enemy. The problem is that Ford, how do they do that? They've got both. They can't say gas sucks, right?

11:16They can't say electric is better. They're in the mushy middle, if you will, And it's a much more challenging way to build a brand if you can't dominate that category. And that's best done with one brand. And listen, it doesn't mean if you're a big company that you can't take advantage of this, but you need to do it with a second brand. So, I mean, look at what Toyota did. I mean, Toyota built a dominant worldwide brand on reliable, affordable cars from Japan. When they wanted to go upscale, they didn't call it the Honda Super Deluxe. They called it a Lexus. When they wanted to go into hybrid, it was a Prius.

11:51And one of the things is always very important is the visualization of your positioning strategy. I call it a visual hammer. So once you identify what that strategy is and who the enemy is, you want to be as visually different as possible. And think back to the Prius. It was small, ugly, weird. Or you think to Tesla, Tesla's door handles. They're impossible to get in that car. I mean, I've broken many nails on those things. But you can tell them a million miles away on the road, right? They're instantly recognizable. It distinguishes themselves, their brand. And so that is incredibly important.

12:27But I love examples. One of the most fun things about the book is doing the research on all these companies to look back and, again, look at big brands. What did Tide Detergent do, right? They dominate and laundry detergent. but they were first in a new category that was heavy duty detergent. Who was the enemy? Soap. Everyone was using soap and they were heavy duty detergent. And you look back, Colgate, the world leader in toothpaste, who was the enemy? Tooth powder, paste, and it was little spoons. They were the first in a tube. I mean, these big ideas came from simple ways to pioneer new categories.

13:05And sometimes it was just the packaging. Kleenex tissue was the first in a pop-up box. It wasn't sold in bags. But think today, it is so exciting to look at these brands. And one of my favorites is the Farmer's Dog. It's not a global brand. I think it's just here in the US, but it's a subscription-based food for dogs. That's fresh food. Not fresh, but it's human-grade food. It's lightly cooked. You get it frozen, and you feed your dog incredible, healthy food. Now, most companies, when they think about positioning or branding, they just want to talk about the benefits. We're the greatest this.

13:38It's the greatest food. It has the greatest ingredients. Uh-uh. What do they focus on? Yeah, they talk about that. But most importantly, they got to knock out the enemy first. Who's the enemy? Dry dog food. I fed my dog dry dog food for years. Expensive, fancy, dry dog food. I thought I was doing the right thing. But now that I know, farmer's dog told me, uh-uh, that's brown burnt balls. They gave it a name, brown burnt balls. Highly processed food, brown burnt balls. You don't want to feed your dog processed food for every meal of their life. You as people, you shouldn't eat processed food. You know why?

14:18It's going to shorten your life. Do you want your dog to live longer? Their slogan, long live dogs. Don't feed them processed food every meal of their life. It will shorten their life. Very successful. Now, when you have that focus, the name is important. I said the category is king, but the name is how you verbalize it. And it's a great when you have the focus on dogs, farmer's dog, it's memorable, it's emotional, all those things come together and it's perfection.

14:54Amazing, Laura. I have some follow-up questions. You mentioned visual hammer, which is interesting. Could you elaborate on the visual hammer? Yeah, well, it's a way to visualize your strategy, meaning visuals are so much more emotional than words. What's interesting, so the original positioning book and the strategy was all about owning a word in the mind. And if you go back and read that book, it's all about words. And that is the end goal. But it's very hard to get words in the mind. It's more effective to drive them in with a visual, a visual that can bring emotional power and also visibility and distinctiveness out there in the market.

15:31So you think about the Nike swoosh, the Coca-Cola contour bottle. You have Corona beer with the lime in the top. Tiffany's blue box. All of these are powerful visual hammers that reinforce either the leadership for Nike. There's nothing great about the swoosh, but because they're the leader, that simple visual has become to symbolize it. And they've used it consistently over decades, right? So very, very nice too, if you can have a name that lends itself to a visual. So in some cases, we have a store here called Target. You can guess they use a target as their visual and it reinforces that name.

16:09So when giving yourself a brand name, if you can bring in a word that can be visualized, it's very nice. And the other thing you said was naming the enemy, right? And putting a name to something. Is there a way to actually do that in a way that makes sense for the brand and your reposition? Yeah, well, it's, listen, if you're pioneering a new category, I mean, the enemy could be a lot of things. It doesn't have to be a competitor. It could be, right? You've got Starbucks versus Dunkin, and they very clearly fight head to head. But it also could be the previous category. So when you're pioneering a new category, iPhone, for example, what did they call them spells?

16:50The first smartphone, they created a new category with a great name that instantly reposition, you know, the Nokia as the dumb phone. So all of a sudden, we're like, oh, my God, I have a dumb phone. I need a smartphone. The category name is incredibly, incredibly important. But it could be a convention, it could be an idea, it just has to be something specific that is the contrast of what you're offering. Sometimes it could just be not doing it. Or for example, we have a cancer center, they focus on ending cancer. And you know, their slogan is, you know, ending cancer, and they cross out the word cancer with a big red line.

17:23It's a beautiful visualization to communicate something that is very, very powerful. Thank you. And one more question before we hop on to the next part is we've mentioned a lot of B2C brands here. Is there any nuances for B2B brands? Absolutely. Many times you have longer sales cycles. You've got processes. You've got to get in the meeting. You've got to be able to pitch. And you've got to set up why you should be on that short list. What are you offering? What is your difference? And many successful B2Bs have really gone strong with this concept. One great example is Salesforce. What did they do?

18:01They pioneered CRM in the cloud. But initially, they didn't focus on talking about the cloud at all. The entire focus of their campaign was no software, the end of software. And they ran absolutely crazy marketing events, picketing Oracle and doing all sorts of shenanigans. but really to hammer in the main point is that we are not software, pointing out all the problems with software. And that really is what led the success of the company and the driving force to today. Now they're focused on being the leader in the cloud, but it's what gets in the mind. That's the hardest thing in branding. Once you're successful, once you're Amazon, right, you're at 30 ,000 feet, you have the luxury of, you know, doing things in a slightly different way and their enemy is you know everything in retail right so they are online and the enemy is retail why why go to a store right i don't know you just order it on amazon let's bring this back down to like brands so a lot of our audience are running brands the brand builders themselves the strategists or their designers they're out there so let's think about like some practical things like maybe the entrepreneurs maybe the cmos like how would anyone managing a brand just start to kind of identify their enemies and i guess the question really to get it super sharp is how do they know they've got the right enemy well there's a lot of questions there it's like a three-part question you know me i just like to you know shake things up a bit no absolutely i I just have to remember them in order.

19:39It's like a test. Okay. So first and foremost, when thinking about, you know, your exciting idea is, can we finagle this so that we can say it's a new category? Can we position this so we make extinct or, you know, out of fashion, the previous category and, you know, showcase in a way so that we can stand out and be different. That is an ideal situation. you're not always in that situation, right? But if you do have the luxury of saying this is, you know, Tide and we're a heavy duty detergent, we're not soap, that's a great place to play. And that makes it instantly clear who the enemy is. You go back in history, what was Duracell?

20:22It was the first alkaline only battery. And here's the interesting thing. Sometimes you don't necessarily have to be the pioneer, but you have to be the first that narrows the focus on just doing that and building it with better branding. and more strongly going against the enemy. We have a great brand here. It's called Dude Wipes. This is an entrepreneur who is, I don't know if you know these things, but they're moist toilet paper that's flushable, plant-based, you use in the bathroom to clean up after you do number two. Huge success. One of his marketing campaigns is he has a mini Cooper and he calls it the mini pooper.

21:00And he really goes, drives around the country and doing all of his store openings. But in any case, he didn't invent this category, but the product was being a line extension done by the major toilet paper companies. And they really couldn't market it very well because what were they going to say? Our regular product sucks. You should use this wet one. So they had this crazy names, line extension names. So he really narrowed in on the focus and went very strongly saying, you know, send toilet paper back to the Stone Ages, this smear, all sorts of crazy things to make it very clear the benefits of this wet toilet paper product.

21:38So that is a very good way. If you're not, if you're in an existing category, you look at, of course, the leader. I mean, that most likely is the enemy. And so what do you have to do? You can't copy them and be better. And too often, that's what many people think. But you look at the leader and you say, how can I be the opposite? Right. If Listerine is bad tasting, Scope was good tasting. If Walmart is the world's greatest retailer with always low prices, what does Target do? They say, well, we can't compete on price, but we can compete on fashion. And so they're just a little bit more fashionable.

22:15We call it cheap chic and Target is the nickname. So a way to differentiate from that leader. Red Bull pioneered energy drinks. Who's the strong number two against Red Bull? Everyone's tried. Thousands of energy drinks have flooded the market since Red Bull. Almost none were a big success. Why? Because they copied Red Bull. They all were in that tiny can because people felt, well, that's what energy drinks should be. The big number two brand is monster. They were in a 16-ounce can. Now, is 16 better? Who knows? It's more calories. But it's different. It was different. And when they had the concept of, we're going to focus on the big can, they came up with a great name, monster, and a great visual, the green claws of the monster can.

23:03And they sponsor monster truck jam and all sorts of off-roading and monster-like sporting activities, it all then syncs together when you first identify what it is we want to be against, how are we going to be different from them, and how are we going to maintain our focus on that and doing it, you know, to build that brand in the mind. Amazing, amazing. So let's imagine we've gone through the steps, we found our strategic enemy, and let's imagine we're a leadership team of a brand. Like, how do we or how do you tend to consult and advise leaders of these brands to kind of like take the concept and then pull that down into their teams, like to kind of really embed it into the psyche of the business and the brand that they're working with?

23:55Well, I do really believe that, you know, positioning should come from the top. This concept, you know, the leader should initiate this, that we need to maintain a focus. If we don't, our brand isn't going to stand for anything. And we're not going to have an enemy to face. The challenge for most companies is they're into too many things. They've got too many line extensions, too many categories. And so there is no clear enemy that they're going against. And they're, you know, trying to chase too many markets. And it's a very competitive world out there. And things change very quickly. And so being on top of your category, and if you're lucky enough to be the leader, continue to improve in that instead of chasing the line extensions, which to me is the true strategic enemy of positioning today is not creativity.

24:41I don't think people, you know, our book, The Fall of Advertising, The Rise of PR, our stance is that PR builds brands, is advertising is absolutely necessary to maintain brands. So once you have a brand that's well-established, you blast away with advertising. And advertising that repeats, repeats, repeats, right? You want to repeat your message, repeat your visual. You want to be the ultimate driving machine. It's been used for 30 years. Or we have a brand here, Chick-fil-A. It's one of the hottest fast food brands and they have a focus. They never went to hamburgers. They started with the chicken fried chicken sandwich and they stuck to that.

25:19They're even closed on Sundays. The founder wanted to give his employees Sunday off. And so they've stuck to that. It's become kind of the lure of the company. And I think when you go to work, because this is really important internally, you know, what are we fighting for? Right. I mean, are we fighting? Are we at Patagonia and we're, you know, fighting for, you know, don't buy this jacket, you know, use these and wear these clothes forever? Or Tesla saying gasoline cars are bad? Or we Chick-fil-A, and they famously for 30 years now have used the same slogan, and they have cows, you know, cartoon cows that tell people to eat more chicken.

25:54Now, how many companies can do that? Not a lot, because they don't have a focus, right? They're selling hamburgers and chicken, right? So when you do that, how are you going to say that, you know, Now you should eat more chicken. I love that. I love that. So what you're saying is it really, if you define your strategic enemy, it begins to start to sharpen, not just your advertising, not just the way that you're kind of communicating, but also what product you go after, what category you're looking to kind of really dominate. I guess it sharpens your innovation. It sharpens your messaging. It sharpens your decision making, right?

26:31Absolutely. I mean, sharpening your focus is the key ingredient of positioning. And it brings up, I haven't really thought about, but that is one of the reasons for the strategic enemy is to remind you to do that, to reinforce it, to show you the danger of not being focused because you won't be as sharp and clear. You won't have that contrast against whomever, whatever that enemy or convention or idea might be. And so forcing people to stay focused is the most challenging thing of consulting. I mean, it's human nature that you want to expand and explore and try new things. And do that in your personal life.

27:09But when it comes to building a brand, staying focused and being consistent, that's the other thing. Because companies fall in love with their brand. That's another danger too. And that does lead people to go in the line extension route because they think, oh, our our brand is so successful. I mean, our brand is Kodak. Everyone loves Kodak. No, they don't. Kodak stood for film photography. They had no success going to digital because the brand had no credentials in digital, even though they were the pioneer. The reality, though, was very different than the perception. The perception of the brand is what matters in positioning.