Know your enemy
The most powerful and enduring characters in film tend to be villains - the likes of Darth Vader, the Joker and Hannibal Lecter.
In many cases these characters end up overshadowing the hero himself. The first 6 Star Wars movies are about the rise, reign and redemption of Anakin Skywalker. All the characters are essentially there to help tell Anakin’s story.
In fact, Darth Vader’s character arc is so compelling that he is featured as a gargoyle on the Washington National Cathedral. In other words, a villain permeated our collective national conscience more than any hero.
A movie is only as good as its villain because its the villain’s guile, resources, strategy and strength that forces the hero to look deep within himself and come up with ways to overcome the obstacles before him.
Needing to overcome a countervailing force often brings out the best in us. For example, a sense of rivalry with Leonardo Messi pushes Cristiano Ronaldo to compete, find ways to improve and extend his excellence in to his forties.
Similarly, in tennis, the sense of rivalry between Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic pushed each of them to new heights. So much so that Novak Djokovic didn’t eat chocolate for 18 months so that he could perfect his conditioning for grueling Grand Slam duels with Rafa and Roger.
In politics the villain is usually your strongest opponent. For example, New York City Mayor Eric Adams is painting his top rival in November’s election wunderkind Zohran Mamdani as a villain in order to help raise funds and win votes.
Having a villain is also essential in business storytelling. To explain the stakes of a story, we must clearly identify the villain that must be slain in order to achieve our goal.
Sadly, unlike movie villains, business villains are not very theatrical and tend not to dress in flamboyant costumes like the Joker. Business villains are usually competitors, regulators, indecision, inefficiencies (e.g. poor org design) and digital disruption.
Clearly identifying the villain, the challenge posed by the villain and what it will take to defeat the villain is a powerful way to communicate what’s at stake and deepen emotional engagement.
Case in point: regulators are often viewed as villains by business leaders because regulatory efforts can throw sand in the gears for dealmaking and business growth.
For example, as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan’s efforts to take on monopolies and enforce antitrust laws threatened the interests of Wall Street.
Rather than challenge her views on economic policy, Wall Street made her the villain: Khan was portrayed her as anti-business, un-American and a poor leader who had destroyed morale at the FTC.
Establishing Khan as the anti-business villain helped Wall Street communicate the stakes: American enterprise is under threat; economic growth is being challenged by an inexperienced bureaucrat.
Positioning Khan this way was needed to gather support and then lobby President Joe Biden to remove Khan from her position.
Villains need not be confined to public-facing narratives. In fact, they’re also essential to storytelling to internal audiences to help drive decisions, especially since many executives are risk averse.
In business, competitors often make for good villains. For example, executives at legacy media companies had to be convinced that Netflix was the enemy to disrupt themselves and invest in new capabilities to launch their own streamers and compete directly with Netflix rather than continuing to license existing content to Netflix.
In fact, former Disney CFO Tom Staggs painted Netflix as the villain in stark terms by saying that by licensing content to Netflix, Disney was providing its competitors with the bullets to shoot the Mouse House.
Establishing Netflix as the villain helped set the stakes: streaming is an existential threat to Disney. The resulting decision from CEO Bob Iger saw Disney upending its entire business model and going direct-to-consumer in the form of Disney+.
In the tech industry, Microsoft is investing billions into artificial intelligence and needs to see a handsome return on this investment. One way to achieve a robust return is by positioning its CoPilot product as the hero slaying the tyranny of inefficiency, which costs American enterprise 20-30% of annual revenue.
Because when it comes to moving audience and driving decisions, Know Your Enemy isn’t just a Rage Against The Machine song, it’s an essential component of storytelling.