Companies devote enormous energy to competitive analysis. They track market shares, benchmark prices, dissect innovations, and regularly refresh strategy decks with new competitor intelligence. In many organizations, this work is not superficial at all. It is thorough, sophisticated, and sometimes so extensive that it contributes to a form of analysis paralysis: more data, more comparisons, more interpretation, more slides.
There is another problem, too. Many companies study competitors extensively without turning that knowledge into decisive actions. They observe, comment, compare, and occasionally react, but often without deciding where to engage most directly or what it would actually mean to win. The result is a softer form of competition: informed, alert, analytically sophisticated, but not always organized around a concrete battle plan.
The Missing “So What?”
In our experience, the most difficult challenge is translating competitive analysis into the operational details of an action plan, with the right level of focus and discipline.
Companies may correctly identify the main threats, the relevant benchmarks, and even the right strategic ambition, yet still fail at the crucial “so what?”: what exactly should sales, revenue management, marketing, and field teams now do differently? Too often, competitor knowledge remains at the level of commentary. It informs discussion, but does not produce a clear set of objectives and initiatives.
The consequence is familiar. Strategy becomes a sequence of broad ambitions: build relevance, defend margins, grow distribution, sharpen innovation, strengthen commercial execution. None of these goals is wrong. The problem is that they rarely tell teams explicitly what matters most, the scale of improvement required, or the precise actions needed to deliver it.
Needed: an Enemy Brand
We propose a practical method we have repeatedly used in our professional lives, across large and small organizations, to close that gap: define an “enemy brand.”
An enemy brand is the competitor a company chooses to benchmark against and beat: the rival it studies most closely because that rival overlaps directly, performs strongly enough to be instructive, and is close enough to be attacked credibly. It is not necessarily the most glamorous name in the category, nor simply the market leader executives most enjoy mentioning in workshops. It is the opponent from whom a company can realistically take listings, shelf space, displays, distribution, customers, and, ultimately, share.
Once that rival is clearly identified, competitive analysis stops being merely informative. It becomes a way to turn strategy into disciplined action. Instead of asking only, “What is happening in the market?” the business is forced to ask a harder question: “Which rival matters most to us, what exactly must be done to beat it, and by how much, precisely, must our performance improve?”
Choose the Rival That Matters
The chosen rival must be the right one. In general, the enemy brand should be larger than one’s own, but not so large that the exercise becomes fantasy. The point is not to declare symbolic war on the category giant if no credible path exists to hurt it. The point is to identify the rival against whom progress is commercially plausible. A strategy designed to disrupt three competitors at once may sound ambitious in a workshop. In practice, it usually leaves the field with too many reference points, too many implied priorities, and too little clarity about where to focus.
In many categories, that means choosing not the most dominant player, but the most relevant attainable one. This often produces a better internal discipline and a better external story. For customers, distributors, and retailers, “we can become a stronger challenger and take meaningful share from this particular rival” is usually more persuasive than a grandiose campaign to dethrone a player no one realistically expects to be displaced.
A company cannot compete seriously against everyone at once. It needs to decide which rival matters most, where it intends to beat that rival, and on what basis.
Turn Competitor Knowledge Into a Playbook
Once the enemy brand is chosen, competitor analysis becomes more practical. Questions that were previously broad become incredibly precise: how does the rival structure pricing across formats and variants? How often does the competitor promote, and how deep are those promotions? How broad is its assortment? How many innovations do they release on a yearly basis? How does it build presence in market?
These questions reveal the commercial system behind the rival’s performance. They show why the competitor is difficult to beat and where it may be more vulnerable than it first appears. That level of diagnosis is too detailed to apply meaningfully across every competitor in the market. At this depth, strategy needs a chosen opponent. Done properly, it is usually work that can only be carried out at depth for one rival: your enemy brand.
This is the first major benefit of the enemy-brand approach. It turns competitor observation into a playbook. Instead of discussing competitiveness in the abstract, teams can identify the practical architecture of a specific rival’s success.
Turn Insights Into Projects
The enemy-brand approach also turns observations into concrete projects. If two core SKUs rotate more slowly than the rival’s equivalents, that becomes a project. If the rival covers key price points, formats, or occasions where the company’s own line-up is under-equipped, that becomes a project. If the competitor secures stronger floor displays or broader distribution in priority accounts, that becomes a project. The question is no longer what is true about the competition, but what the organization will now do as a result to beat a well-defined rival.
A Brief Example: Sipsmith and Whitley Neill
We applied this logic in premium gin in the UK by defining Whitley Neill as the brand to beat for Sipsmith. That choice turned a broad competitive discussion about the gin market into a much more practical exercise. Instead of positioning the brand vaguely against several rivals at once, the business could focus on one opponent and identify a limited number of actions that would actually matter.
Formats and variants were analyzed to clarify Sipsmith’s relative price index. Range gaps were identified where Whitley Neill offered a broader or more effective shelf answer. The velocity of equivalent SKUs was benchmarked, turning underperformance on two products into a practical improvement project. Distribution gaps were mapped account by account, making it easier to define where resources should be concentrated first. Innovation pace was also assessed, not as a vanity measure, but as a commercial question: was Sipsmith moving fast enough, in the right new flavor segments, to remain competitive?
The enemy-brand approach also sharpened the retailer story. It helped identify where Sipsmith had a stronger argument, where a retailer’s assortment was unbalanced, and why certain listings should be won. In that sense, the enemy brand mindset became a bridge between strategy and execution.
Reduce Complexity for the Field
A third advantage is that the framework forces simplification where it matters most: in execution.
Contrary to what managers in headquarters sometimes believe, field teams cannot execute ten priorities at once. The enemy-brand method encourages a harder discipline: identify the few actions that matter most against the chosen rival, and execute them at scale and relentlessly.
Those actions will vary by category and business model. In some cases, the first priority will be distribution. In others, it will be assortment gaps, price-pack architecture, merchandising standards, display quality, route-to-market execution, or better customer selling arguments. But the principle remains the same. Better a few priorities executed broadly and repeatedly than beautiful execution in a handful of outlets and a speech about opportunities everywhere else.
This is also why the concept travels well across functions. Commercial teams can use it. Sales teams can use it. Revenue management can use it. Supply chain and operations can use it when service levels or availability are part of the battle. General management can use it. In that sense, the enemy brand is not just a marketing device. It is a coordination device.
Set Objectives With Commercial Meaning
Enemy brands improve the quality and calibration of objective-setting. Many operating plans are filled with ambitions that sound sensible but remain operationally soft. An enemy brand provides a real benchmark. If the chosen rival has 85% distribution on a core SKU and the company has 68%, that is a meaningful objective. If the rival wins floor displays in 30% of priority stores and the company reaches only 18%, that is another. The same logic applies to assortment depth, facings, shelf share, feature frequency, promo participation, service levels, and the velocity of equivalent products.
These are not arbitrary KPIs. They are objectives anchored in competitive reality. That makes them easier to defend internally, more intelligible to the field, and more relevant to performance.
Improve the Customer Conversation
The framework also sharpens the story a company brings to customers, distributors, and retailers. Customers are not waiting for one more eloquent presentation on brand essence. They care about
growth, economics, productivity, service, and the strength of the offer. An enemy-brand lens helps a company speak in those terms.
Study the Playbook, Not the Personality
The point is not to imitate the chosen rival’s brand identity or company culture. Companies should study the competitor’s playbook, not copy its personality. What should be studied instead is the playbook: the structural drivers of performance – range architecture, pricing discipline, promotional rhythm, distribution standards, service levels, merchandising quality, innovation cadence, and customer selling arguments.
A Simple Idea With Hard Consequences
The enemy-brand concept sounds simple, but it imposes hard choices. Which rival matters most? Why that one? On what basis can the company credibly beat it? Which actions deserve disproportionate attention? Which metrics should define progress? Which distractions should be excluded?
That is why the concept is useful. It transforms competitive analysis from a soft exercise in observation into a concrete agenda, and into a more disciplined attempt to win.
Sometimes the most productive strategic question is not, “Who are we?” It is, “Who exactly are we trying to beat?”
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