Every Brand Needs An Enemy

Those questions were not academic. They revealed the commercial system behind performance and turned that knowledge into projects. Underperforming SKUs were no longer just disappointing charts, but concrete action points. Range gaps became portfolio projects. Distribution gaps clarified where effort should go first. Stronger floor displays pointed to where execution had to improve.

The enemy-brand lens also strengthened the retailer conversation. It helped show where Sipsmith had the better argument, where an assortment looked incomplete or unbalanced, and why certain listings should be won. That is what many competitive reviews fail to do. They generate insight, but not consequences. An enemy brand narrows that gap by forcing the organization to move from commentary to action.

A better organizational focus

Headquarters might admire complexity, but field teams cannot execute 10 priorities at once. 

One of the recurring flaws in strategy is that leadership passes too much clutter into the organization and too little clarity. 

The enemy-brand method imposes a more brutal but more useful discipline: identify the few actions that matter most against the chosen rival and execute them forcefully, and without constantly changing your mind.

That concept travels well across functions, from sales and revenue management to marketing to supply chain to general management. 

In that sense, the enemy brand is not just a brand tool. It is a coordination tool.

Many operating plans have respectable-sounding ambitions that feel arbitrary or are operationally soft. But once you know you are at 68% distribution on a core SKU and the chosen rival is at 85%, you do not just have a vague ambition to “improve distribution.” You have a concrete gap to close, and a legitimate objective to track. 

The same applies to secondary displays, assortment breadth, feature frequency, or shelf share.

Study the playbook, not the personality

There is an important caveat: if you focus too much on an enemy brand, don’t you risk turning your own brand into a copy?

It is a fair objection. Choosing an enemy does not mean copying it. The point is not to imitate the rival’s brand personality, tone of voice, visual identity, or cultural style. That road usually leads to a weaker imitation.

Don’t study the personality. Study the playbook. Study the range architecture, the pricing discipline, the promotional rhythm, the route to market, the merchandising standards, the innovation cadence, the selling story, the structural drivers of performance. 

A brand can learn a great deal from an enemy without becoming derivative.

The goal is not to become a copy, but to become more dangerous.