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- Your brand’s enemy 🎃
Your brand’s enemy 🎃
Is your marketing missing its dark side?
Kirsty Boden-Stuart
October 30, 2024
In partnership with
In partnership with
Every story needs a villain, and your brand’s story is no exception.
Now, before you start picturing moustache-twirling baddies or internet trolls, hang on.
We're not here to point fingers at actual people — there’s enough division on the internet, let’s do our best not to add to it, eh?
Find out how to identify your villain (and why it’s so important that you do) after a message from Hubspot.👇️
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OK, so what’s all this talk of a villain?
I'm talking about the big, bad wolf that’s huffing and puffing at your audience's door.
Maybe it's soul-crushing student debt that's got your audience living on noodles. Or perhaps it's the tyranny of the 9-to-5 grind that's sucking the life out of their hopes and dreams. Maybe it’s the patriarchy or oil-swilling corporations.
Or perhaps it’s ruthless, unscrupulous marketing practices…
Whatever it is, your villain is something your brand stands for that your audience can get behind too.
Think Patagonia are just selling overpriced fleece jackets? Nope. They're rallying against the villain of environmental destruction. A villain they share with their audience. Suddenly, buying a $200 jacket isn't just a purchase—it's a battle cry for Mother Earth.
Or look at Apple. Their villain? The mind-numbing conformity of PC culture. They're not just selling tech devices; they're fighting against the beige box brigade – and so are legions of Apple fans.
When you give your audience a bigger dragon to slay, you're not just a brand anymore. You're part of their story, their quest, their very identity.
Your villain isn’t something that just comes in to wind the hero up, it provides wider context and deeper meaning to their struggles – a wider context, an unfairness, a David and Goliath situation — that’s where to look for your villain.
Brands that give their audience a wider narrative to be a part of — something bigger than them, something bigger than any one product or service — are the brands that people want to engage with and be associated with.
Giving your audience a deeper sense of meaning then, is good for you, good for them, and good for the world.
So, find your villain. Give your audience a cause to rally behind. Because in the end, people don't just buy, donate or subscribe—they buy into better versions of themselves.
And if you can help them be the hero in their own story? Well, that's when the magic happens.
Happy Halloween. 🎃
If you liked this post please give the mini-version a like and share on LinkedIn. Be good to see you there too 👉️ LinkedIn mini-version
PS: This post is an adapted extract from my upcoming course, which teaches ordinary marketers how to switch their marketing game from being ignored to being utterly irresistible.
I’m nearly finished. Nearly, nearly. I’ve been working on this for half a year (or my whole life?). It’s gonna be good. Patience. Patience.
PPS: Roku wants a word. 👇️
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