No one likes a bad guy. But everyone can rally around a hero.
What would Batman be without the Joker? Just a rich dude in a bat suit and car that shoots out flames on the way to a dinner date. Gotham rallies around the idea of a masked vigilante going above and beyond to protect their city from the evil elements again and again. (Due to an internal squabble with one of our teammates being pro-Marvel over pro-DC, we won’t be discussing any more superhero comparisons in this article. We’ll save that for another post.)
As a brand, you can find enemies as well. While you might not view your competition as a direct threat to your business, it would be naive to not assume that your competition is thinking of you as a threat to theirs.
Apple spent years poking fun of Microsoft in TV and digital ads – and this did wonders for the Apple brand and its market share. Microsoft has since taken time in their marketing to be more like Apple, even creating Apple-like storefronts where people can come in, try products and talk to experts to find the right solution for them.
But taking the Apple approach of publicly going after a brand isn’t always the best way to go about it. As a small business owner, publicly calling out or taking on a competitor can have negative ramifications that you can’t step back and control.
Let’s play out a completely hypothetical, definitely didn’t happen in real life situation: a small business owner is harassed both publicly and privately by someone that saw them as a direct threat to the credibility of their business. This person took to Facebook, Twitter, blogs and behind-the-scenes messaging to disparage this small business owner and other brands that were associated with them. This person had a history of going after people/brands that they saw as a threat and the sporadic attacks were generally accepted amongst their clientele. But this time, they attacked individuals that are well liked and respected within their community.
After the attacks, the community around this purely hypothetical small business owner and their attacker are unsure of what might happen next. In the end, the negativity that was shown both publicly and privately might harm this person’s reputation to a degree that might not be reconciled. Will the attacker’s business continue to go on? Definitely. Will the small business owner be just fine as well? Definitely. But will people within their community, after hearing the details and truths/mistruths from both sides of the schism, think twice about doing business with a brand that has consistently harassed many individuals and companies online? Definitely.
As a larger or established brand/company, going after a smaller brand or individual looks petty and childish. If your product or service is superior to that of your competitors, let them come after you. And you can fend off those attacks with your infinite knowledge in your field. If you’re as smart as you think/say you are, people will find and trust you for years to come. But as Omar says in HBO’s “The Wire”, “If you come at the king, best not miss.” A failed takedown based on conjecture or anything that isn’t concrete data in the eyes of your audience can, and often will, backfire.
Be the hero of your industry – set out onto the world to share your knowledge, products and/or services in a way that your audience can’t refuse to take notice of. But if you feel like you need to create an enemy to make your brand stronger, you’d better be one of the good guys, or else you’ll end up wishing you hadn’t.
