Strategic Narrative: How to Choose the Right Enemy

At the start of this year, Influ2 adopted a new strategic narrative. Along with a fresh approach, we swapped out “person-based advertising” for “contact-level advertising.”

The shift wasn’t just about changing terminology. It was a response to something we noticed: the term “person-based” was confusing. Some thought it meant “persona-based” (like targeting broad buyer personas). Others assumed we were talking about targeting specific individuals one-by-one with hundreds of personalized ads, each with literal people’s names on banners.

But the real challenge in building this narrative wasn’t describing the technology itself. It was deciding on the right enemy to fight.

Contact-level ads may sound more intuitive as a term. But without the right enemy, one question lingers: “Why should people care about this new type of ad if their current advertising tools have been doing the job just fine?”

Answering that question became the foundation of our new strategic narrative.

"The best enemy is not a problem or a competitor. It's a mindset." - Andy Raskin

The “enemy” in a strategic narrative isn’t a competitor or a specific problem – it’s a mindset. It's the way people currently think about your industry, your product, or their needs. The best kind of enemy is the one that’s deeply ingrained in your audience’s thinking – so deeply that it needs to be shifted for them to truly succeed.

For Influ2, our enemy was a mindset that confined ads to the lead generation phase. We’re advocating for something bigger – that ads could and should play a role at every stage of the buyer’s journey, from pipeline generation to closing the deal and even into post-sale expansion.

We’ve tested a few different enemies in the past, and they didn’t exactly lead us in the right direction:

• Enemy iteration #1: ABM sucks, person-based advertising rules.
  When ABM was just taking off, pitching ourselves as the "better" alternative to ABM made us sound like we’re throwing shade at a movement everyone else was getting behind. Customers weren’t buying it. They had just invested in an ABM tool and didn’t want some small vendor telling them their decision was wrong.
• Enemy iteration #2: ABM isn’t precise enough, Influ2 is high-resolution ABM.
  This one sounded nice, but it was too vague. No one really got it. We were preaching precision, but no one could grasp what exactly we meant by it.

It wasn’t until we stopped trying to position Influ2 as a better version of ABM that everything clicked. We realized that Influ2 wasn’t about ABM at all – it was about championing a new way for GTM teams to think about advertising. Instead of just focusing on top-of-the-funnel, our product could boost revenue throughout the entire sales pipeline.

Andy Raskin, our partner in building the new narrative, perfectly summed this up: “I thought this was a huge thing when you guys got to this. Because it's not positioning against ABM, it's positioning against other kinds of advertising. What we're saying is, traditional advertising is essentially a top of the funnel tool. What you're offering is, advertising can be useful as someone goes through the sales pipeline or even when the deal is waiting to be signed.”

Here’s the thing with coming up with strategic messaging: we assume that when we say something, people understand it the same way we do. 

Ever try to follow your coach’s instructions at the gym when you’re just starting out? To them, it’s obvious what needs to be done. But if you’re new, the words don’t quite click, and you end up doing it wrong – not because you’re clueless, but because you’ve never tried doing these exercises before.

Building a narrative is the same way. The framework might be there, but the right words that truly inspire action take time and careful thought.

The key to getting your prospects to see the value in your product is to define your enemy clearly. If your audience realizes that the mindset they’re stuck in is the real enemy – and that your product directly tackles that enemy – then suddenly, they get it. And that’s when the value clicks.