Fed up with lukewarm storytelling: how “anti” brands steal the spotlight from everyone else

Why the most compelling brands need an enemy (not yet another “purpose”)

While 90% of brands are still wondering which vaguely consensual “purpose” to highlight, an active minority has chosen a different path: find a clear enemy, own it, and build their entire storytelling against it.

It’s not exactly “nice.” But it’s damn effective.

Black Sheep, or the optician charging into BHV like a ram

Latest example: Black Sheep, a low-cost optician that’s about to set up shop in BHV Marais in Paris. Their promise fits in one simple sentence: if you pay €450 for your glasses in France, it’s not because they’re expensive to make, it’s because for years you’ve been treated like a walking wallet.

According to the reports covering their arrival, Black Sheep will sell frames starting at €2.95 and single-vision lenses around €5, progressive lenses at €25, with a claimed transparency that everything comes from Chinese factories, and even an in-store webcam streaming live production from one of those factories.

The storytelling is crystal clear:

• Enemy: traditional opticians selling glasses for several hundred euros on average.
• Hero: the “black sheep” of optics that breaks the rent and exposes the system.
• Proof: outrageous prices (in the downward direction) and aggressive transparency (the factory webcam).

Where a classic brand would have said, “We’re making glasses more accessible,” Black Sheep says, “We’re putting an end to an organized scam.” The economic reality is the same, but the narrative frame changes everything.

Result: even before opening, the brand has secured massive media coverage and sparked a national debate about the price of glasses. It hasn’ta pas acheté l’attention: elle l’a créée en instituant un conflit.

Back Market: hacking Apple ads to attack “fast tech”

Another interesting case: Back Market, a refurbished marketplace, has invented an enemy that isn’t any one person in particular, but an entire system: “fast tech”. The idea is simple: the same logic as fast fashion, but applied to smartphones, consoles, and laptops.

For Earth Day 2025, Back Market hijacked Apple’s iconic “Shot on iPhone” campaign: same visual codes, but the photos showed environmental degradation between two generations of smartphones (clear-cut forests, vanished glaciers), with an explicit message about the impact of this obsession with “always new”.

Here again, the mechanism is clear:

• Enemy: the culture of obsolescence, symbolized by major tech brands.
• Hero: refurbished devices, presented as an act of resistance.
• Proof: environmental impact figures and a story of absurd uses (phones replaced every two years, devices sleeping in drawers).

Back Market doesn’t just explain that buying refurbished is “responsible”. The brand puts its audience on the side of those who refuse a toxic model. It’s a moral stance, not a simple USP.

Oatly: the “post-milk generation” against milk culture

In the food sector, Oatly has been playing the card of openly embraced antagonism for years. The brand doesn’t just sell oat-based drinks, it sells an identity: that of the “post-milk generation”, which looks at a carton of cow’s milk as a relic of the 20th century.

When it launched in France, Oatly covered Paris neighbourhoods with street-art style murals saying “Bonjour Paris” and signalling that the brand was arriving as the “flag-bearer of the post-milk generation”. No classic 4×3 product billboard, but an almost cultural statement: “we are here to shake up your normality”.

• Enemy: the implicit norm “milk is neutral and universal”.
• Hero: consumers who choose oats, out of ecological or ethical awareness.
• Proof: educational campaigns, blind tests, very talkative communication about carbon footprint.

Oatly doesn’t just sell a substitute. It stages a generational shift, and, as a consequence, accepts being hated by the dairy lobby. Here again, the enemy acts as an amplifier.being hated by the dairy lobby. Here again, the enemy acts as an amplifier.

BrewDog: when antagonism backfires on the brand

To be fair, not everything is rosy in the world of “anti” brands. BrewDog is a good example.

In 2022, the Scottish brewery declared itself the “official anti-sponsor” of the World Cup in Qatar, with an outdoor campaign calling the event the “World F*Cup” and targeting the corruption and human-rights abuses surrounding the tournament.

On paper, this was consistent with their punk, anti-establishment brand positioning. In reality, the brand was accused of hypocrisy: it continued to broadcast the matches in its bars and to serve beer in Qatar, while presenting itself as the loudest moral opponent.

A useful takeaway for us: antagonism works extremely well… right up until the moment your own coherence no longer holds.

What these cases say about communication today

What links Black Sheep, Back Market, Oatly and BrewDog is not a graphic style or a sector. It is a strategic decision: accepting that the brand does not speak “to everyone” and that it is built through opposition.

A few obvious takeaways these cases make hard to ignore:

• In a saturated landscape, the real differentiator is no longer the promise, but the conflict.
  Everyone promises to be more responsible, more human, more digital. Few brands accept to say clearly what they are fighting against.

• The enemy is a narrative shortcut.
  When you say “we are the black sheep of optics against 450-euro glasses,” everyone immediately gets the story. Same when you say “fast tech” or “post-milk generation.” You oversimplify the world, but you make your position readable.

• The media love stories with a villain.
  It is human. A story where a brand attacks a system, a price, a cultural norm is easier to tell than another product launch that is “more sustainable.”

• The price to pay is consistency.
  The sharper your message, the more your actions will be scrutinized. BrewDog knows it. Tomorrow, Black Sheep will be expected to deliver on quality, production conditions and service. Antagonism is an accelerator, not a shield.

What if your brand also needed a clear enemy?

The real question for your own products and services may not be: “What is our purpose?”, but rather: “What are we truly the counterpoint to?”

Concretely, that can lead to very simple directions:

• A business school that openly states: “We do not train compliant managers, but people who are unmanageable for toxic organisations.”

• An aesthetic clinic that says clearly: “We are against permanent filtering. Here, we correct less and advise more.”

• A B2B SaaS brand that claims: “We are not selling yet another tool, we are the detox cure for your Excel spreadsheets.”

Nothing forces you to be aggressive or vulgar. But as long as your brand refuses to name the enemy (the norm, the habit, the rent, the laziness), it remains condemned to speak the same language as everyone else.

At Enigma, we are seeing more and more Swiss brands tempted by this shift: stepping away from polite discourse, accepting a form of controlled conflict, and making that tension the heart of the narrative. When done well, it is a strategy that ticks three boxes at once: differentiation, attention, memorability.

The real question, in the end, is simple: are you ready to own who you annoy, so you can finally exist for real in people’s minds?