The Invisible Enemy Strategy: Why Systems Marketing Will Dominate 2026

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Brain Driven Brands

Episode: The Invisible Enemy Strategy: Why Systems Marketing Will Dominate 2026
Host: Sarah Levinger
Date: November 27, 2025

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode dissects the advanced neuromarketing strategies employed by massive brands and unveils the “invisible enemy” approach—an evolved form of systems-based marketing. By studying historical and current examples (like True Classic, Spotify, and even Borax), Sarah Levinger and her guest reveal how brands can leverage psychological villains and fit their products into broader lifestyle systems to supercharge sales, reduce costs, and capture audience loyalty in 2026 and beyond.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Historical Case Studies Matter

• Cutting Through Modern Noise:
  Sarah champions the use of early 20th-century marketing case studies, arguing they're more instructive than current platform-focused trends because they hone in on timeless marketing principles.
  • Quote (02:17):

    “It cuts away all the platform BS that we’re all wrapped up in today and just goes to core principles.” — Sarah

2. The Borax Case Study: Origins of the Invisible Enemy

• Background:
  Early 1900s, Pacific Coast Borax Company—had a product (Borax) but no real market advantage against ubiquitous soap.
• The Shift:
  With emerging science focusing on “invisible” germs, Borax's marketers reframed the conversation—selling fear of what soap couldn’t clean (germs/minerals you can’t see).
• Psychological Villain:
  They didn’t attack soap; they attacked “the invisible enemy”—microbes, mineral deposits, unseen dangers.
  • Quote (04:15):

    “They went after invisible dirt as their psychological villain. And I love this because we talk about enemies so much.” — Sarah

3. Picking the Right Enemy in Marketing

• Don’t Attack Competitors Directly:
  Target psychological problems the whole industry can agree are worth solving, not just rival brands.

  • Quote (06:54):

    “Don’t attack a competitor. Go after something that’s much more psychologically focused that everybody has an experience with.” — Sarah

• Memorable Example:
  The guest relates a watch brand campaign:

  • Rather than “anti-Rolex,” they ran ads like “against boring, soulless watches.”
  • Going too hard on a direct competitor sometimes alienates potential customers (08:11).
  • Consistently targeting broader psychological pain points created more lasting success.

4. System-Based Marketing: Selling More Than a Product

• From Product Catalog to Lifestyle Manual:
  Borax ran household manuals—not product catalogs—educating customers about modern cleaning science and only subtly positioning their product inside the system.

  • Quote (10:45):

    “Don’t sell the freaking product. Sell them a system that the product fits into.” — Sarah

• Application to Modern Brands:
  Health brands should fit supplements into the user’s existing lifestyle system (“exercise, diet, sleep—this completes it!”).

  • Quote (12:35):

    “You’ve already got exercise, diet, sleep... This fits into it. This makes it better. This completes the system.” — Guest

• Defining a System:
  Quote (12:14):

  “A system is just a set of connected things or parts that work together as a complex whole to achieve a specific common purpose or function.” — Sarah

5. Practical Brand Takeaways & Modern Parallels

• Fit Your Product Into a Larger Connection:
  Position your offer as the missing link in a greater, value-driving whole (blue-collar identity, wellness, creative workflow).

• Borax’s Results:
  Their “system” approach led to a sixfold sales increase and national staple status (15:10).

• Applying to Tether OS & E-commerce:
  The guest gives a live example for creative strategy SaaS—moving from hit-or-miss ad-making to a system that loops in continuous customer feedback, thus turning creative output from singles to triples/home runs (16:22).

  • Quote (16:22):

    “Now we don’t go 1 for 10 on ads. We go 7 for 10... that’s what it is for you.” — Guest

• Action Steps for Listeners:

  • Find an “incomplete” in your category and position your brand/product as the critical missing puzzle piece.
  • Avoid targeting rivals, attack systemic, psychologically relevant pain points instead.
  • Sell the system, not just the product.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Enemies in Marketing (06:54):

  “Don’t attack a competitor. Go after something that’s much more psychologically focused that everybody has an experience with.” — Sarah

• On the Power of Systems (10:45):

  “Don’t sell the freaking product. Sell them a system that the product fits into.” — Sarah

• Direct Application to Modern Brands (12:35):

  “You’ve already got the exercise, you’ve already got the diet, you’ve already got sleep. This fits into it. This makes it better. This completes the system. This is how you get to the next step without really having to try harder. Like, it fits into what you’re doing already.” — Guest

• On Results (15:10):

  “Their profits crossed 1 million, which was enormous...and they became national staple brand just by telling people they were not getting all of it.” — Sarah

• Actionable Encouragement (17:00):

  “What do you complete that’s currently incomplete that you can go attack as a brand? Go find that enemy, find that villain. Stick your product right in the middle of what people are already looking at.” — Sarah

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Historical Marketing Case Study Begins — 01:26
• Borax as the Original "Invisible Enemy" Campaign — 02:30
• How to Pick the Right Enemy — 06:39
• System vs. Product Selling — 10:45
• Lifestyle Systems & Brand Identity — 11:25
• Modern Application & Defining a “System” — 12:14
• Borax’s Massive Growth & Takeaways — 14:58
• Applying the System Thinking to Modern Martech — 16:05
• Final Action Steps for Marketers — 17:00

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Tone & Style

The episode is energetic, wry, and actionable. Sarah’s passion for marketing history and practical psychology shines throughout, keeping the conversation lively and stuffed with quotable, counterintuitive insights. Both speakers are direct, eager to riff on real-world brand examples, and focused on giving marketers immediately useful frameworks for campaign transformations.

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Conclusion

The Invisible Enemy Strategy is all about shifting from product marketing to “systems marketing”—identifying incomplete systems in your category, constructing psychological villains (often invisible, like Borax’s germs), and positioning your solution as the final, essential piece. Brands that master this won’t just survive platform changes in 2026—they’ll dominate.

Perfect for: e-commerce founders, creative strategists, and any marketer seeking fresh, psychology-driven ways to stand out in crowded, ever-evolving markets.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome back to Brain Driven Brands.

[B]

Welcome back.

[A]

I'm so excited. You know, I've been listening to the last couple of episodes, which, you know, that I usually don't do.

[B]

You listen to them?

[A]

But now I'm picturing, like, the music playing while I'm giving this intro. It's fun.

[B]

I can't believe you listened to them, first of all. That's very kind of you. Why were you listening to our episode?

[A]

Because there was something that I said. There's something I said a couple weeks ago that I forgot, but I knew it was good and I wanted to go and hear it. I still haven't found the thing that it was, so I'll give you.

[B]

Which. Which episode was it from?

[A]

I don't know. That's the problem.

[B]

Okay, what was the phrase? Because I could probably.

[A]

I don't know. I just remember.

[B]

Oh, you.

[A]

I said something on the pod and I was like, oh, I should remember that for later.

[B]

Hilarious.

[A]

And then I didn't.

[B]

Also, you say a lot of, like, good things. Like, anytime I say bars, bars, bars. After you speak, I'm like, I should clip that. I should clip that. But there's too many of them. I can't clip all of them because there's so many. So I have issues with editing at the back end because I'm like, I don't know.

[A]

It's a lot of work being a podcaster, guys. I don't know if y' all know that or not.

[B]

It kind of is, and it's fine. Like, I appreciate it just because I love the show. I love working with Nate. I love all of the stuff that we get to talk about on this show. So I'm here for it. But I'm also just kind of like, okay, now I gotta edit for the next three hours after this one. It's great. It's fine. Anyways, we're good.

[A]

Anyways, in between editing, I hear you've been reading some history books and you got a fun case study for us.

[B]

Today that this whole entire, like, history segment. I don't know what you'd call it, like, history thing that we do literally stems from historical case study. Oh, that's a great one. Historical case studies stemmed from that one episode where we talked about orange juice, apples and oranges.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yes. If you haven't listened to that one, I'll link it below because that was such a good episode, and now I can't get enough of it because I love history and I love brands and I love marketing. So I found another one. We're going to do a history breakdown. History case study.

[A]

By the way, let me throw out one note of why I think these are great and why I think you guys should like be paying more attention to historical case studies than anything that's come out recently. It cuts away all the platform BS that we're all wrapped up in today and just goes to like core principles.

[B]

Yes. Back.

[A]

Every case study today is like, oh, we launched this many ads on meta and had this account structure and it's like that doesn't matter as much as the core marketing principles. And I love going back to a time where like, that's all they had.

[B]

Yes. This. Well, and this is really interesting because I try to find them in early 1900s. Hundreds. Jesus. Early 1900s, during the time period where we saw some of the best advertisers in history came out and like were. This was like their. Their golden era. So we're going to go back to like early 1900s. This was this Pacific Coast Borax Company was sitting on like mountains of this dusty white powder called Borax. Do you know Borax is. Have you ever used it?

[A]

It's like a cleaning thing, right?

[B]

Yeah, it's like a cleaning product. I have only used Borax and this is going to date me a little bit, but I have only used Borax to make gac. Did you ever make gak as a kid?

[A]

Gak.

[B]

You know what gak is?

[A]

Do you mean like slime? Like. Yeah, like that kind of stuff? Yeah, yeah. We didn't call it. That's insane. That sounds like a slur.

[B]

By the way, somebody tweet at me and tell me you know what gak is, because this is what we call in the 90s. If you're a 90s, you know, baby, I'm an 80s baby. But that's fine. We grew up in the 90s called a gak. We made it with Borax. Fine. Apparently it had uses in like glass making. It like was. It was a weird kind of a byproduct of that, but it was kind of an irrelevant thing. In the early 1900s, Soap owned the market for clean. Right. That's all you did when you clean stuff is you went and you got soap. Borax kind of had no advantage here because nobody was really asking for something stronger than soap. So they basically had no reason to be in the cleanliness market until science began kind of studying cleanliness at the microscopic level. During the early 1900s.

[A]

This company, it's like cutting edge tech.

[B]

It was like cutting edge cleanliness tech. They realized that people weren't really afraid of visible dirt because soap had solves that. What people were starting to be afraid of was things they couldn't see. Like the invisible germs.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So Borax then took this problem of like science is now finding there's germs on your hands that you can't see and soap can't fix and turned it into like their marketing plant.

[A]

I love this. This is going to be great for me selling supplements cause like there's a lot of benefits that you can't see. You might not necessarily feel but they are working. I'm locked in on this.

[B]

It's so much, it's so interesting. Okay, let's pause for just a minute. I'm going to tell you something that I have never told anybody before. For years I a hundred percent thought that ads were just really a creativity type thing. They only won if I chose the right hook, the right creator, the right script. I was 100% sure that ads came down to production. And it turns out that's not at all how ads work. We are testing and tweaking and chasing trends but nobody can tell us why that ad worked. This is the reason why I built the Tether West. I am so tired as a creative strategist of not having any insight as to what's going to work. The Tether OS is a system, very simple creative strategy system that reads what your customers are saying in real time, finds the emotional patterns that are underneath those trends and then turns them into direction that your creative team can actually act on right this second. Brands that are using this are currently cutting their creative time in half. They are saving thousands of dollars a month on personnel costs and they really are just less stressed because they know exactly what to say, how to say it and who to say it to. Anybody can use it from your CMO all the way down to your brand new creative strategy hire. You guys want to test out a creative strategy system this year that's very, very simple. Check us out at Tether Insights IO and now back to the show. So Soap didn't. Soap was like the thing that obviously the entire industry was like made up of. But Borax didn't really want to go beat them on soap and like suds sent scrubbing powder because it was not going to work for them. So instead they went after this invisible dirt as their psychological villain. And I love this because we talk about enemies so much. The villain. Yeah. So they decided to go after invisible dirt, mineral Deposits, unseen residues, stuff that like, soap couldn't remove. And this is the key point here. The reason they chose this particular enemy is because it wasn't a lie. It wasn't like a neutral fact about their industry. And I see brands doing this all the time. When they try and pick an enemy for their specific brand, they go after things that are like, all right, that's not really a thing.

[A]

What do you mean? Sure, give some examples.

[B]

Okay, so for instance, a lot of times these brands try and go after competitors as their enemy. Competitor. You can't go after a competitor as your. Your core enemy because they sell what you sell.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

If you go after a competitor, you're constantly. You're just telling people that whatever it is you sell isn't really true or valuable because you're trying to attack a competitor. Please don't attack a competitor. Go after something that's much more psychologically focused that everybody has an experience with.

[A]

So, like, the OG example was like, we weren't calling out Rolex or movement or anything. We were saying, like, you know, against boring, soulless watches.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Like, that's what we're standing. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Go after something the entire industry can stand against because it's way more powerful. And this, I love that call out because I never saw you ran it, like, run any ads that talked about Rolexes or even though I. I heard you talk about wanting.

[A]

But there was one that said cowboys don't wear Rolexes do. Well, mixed results. People hated it, but a lot of people bought from it.

[B]

So it's like, ah, okay, so. And this is the reason why I say this because.

[A]

But like, we pissed off a lot of people that like, were potentially in, in market for us. Rolex was cool.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

Like they think. And like, there's not really anything to. On about Rolex other than like, too many douchebags. I know have one.

[B]

My God, is amazing.

[A]

But like, other than that, it's like, well, it's a great watch. It's a cool brand.

[B]

Like, yeah, yeah.

[A]

So, yeah, it was much better for us to go against, like, boring. Yeah, Soulless. I would have cheap shitty watches.

[B]

I would have loved to see you run that Rolex angle for longer. Like, had you guys talked about it for a couple of years, because then we would have started to see are people actually resonating with this message or did that one ad just piss people off?

[A]

Right? Yeah, yeah, it's interesting.

[B]

I'm really kind of glad that you went the more psychological route because it lasts longer. Like, you guys ran that kind of like soulless watch kind of a mentality, that message for years and years and it worked well.

[A]

And like, we didn't piss anyone off. Like, a lot of our customers had watches from other brands. So there's no reason I alienate someone.

[B]

Yes. Oh, this is why I love this. Okay, so Borax kind of had the same idea. We can't go after our competitor. Soap. Because people like soap.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They use it. I can't go after the competitor. So they went after something that was much more nuanced, which is like this idea of I don't see dirt on my hands, so I must be clean over towards. I can't risk what I can't see. Right. There's something on here that's probably going to hurt me. Even though the soap is still involved. So soap doesn't become the enemy here. It just became an incomplete solution for adapt.

[A]

I love that.

[B]

I'm like, oh, my God, this is so interesting. So for adapt, what's an incomplete solution that exists that you guys can attack?

[A]

That's awesome. That's really dope. All right, so like, we could go a bunch of different ways with this. We could talk about like, diet and exercise is great. That's awesome.

[B]

Incomplete.

[A]

It's incomplete. We can attack. You know, like, eating the right foods is great, but if you live in America, a lot of those foods are contaminated with.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Pesticides.

[B]

So true.

[A]

Chemicals, whatever. So there's a lot of stuff that like, everyone can agree, like, hey, that is a bad thing.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And we have something that can either complete the system or fight against that bad thing.

[B]

Yes. This is gonna make such good ads. I can't wait for this. Okay, so for Borax, this is really interesting. They launched one of the earliest national household product campaigns, a full spread magazine. They launched a direct mailer.

[A]

Love that.

[B]

That were basically like a household manual. So it was teaching modern cleaning science. It was not a product catalog.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

It was a catalog that taught people how to clean their homes.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And I talk about this constantly with brands.

[A]

That's awesome.

[B]

Don't sell the freaking. I know. This story is like blowing my mind. Don't sell the freaking product. Sell them a system that the product fits into.

[A]

I love that. I love that so much. I'm gonna read this catalog.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Because, like, go do it. I mean, yeah, first of all, if you sell anything in health and wellness, like, this is the podcast episode for you.

[B]

100. It's so interesting.

[A]

And like, you know, I love what you said about like, don't sell the product. Sell a system that it fits into. Like, that's what I think we did a decent job of doing at. Oh, gee, I haven't figured out how to do it here yet. But, like, I was not trying to sell you a watch. I was trying to let you know that the lifestyle of a guy.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That works hard all week and takes wife out for date night on Friday, and he wears boots and hats and jeans. This is something that fits into that well.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And if you're not doing that, then, like, you're not the full man. You could be.

[B]

Yeah. You were lucky because they already had a system. My system is boots. My system is jeans. My system is whiskey. My sister is white. Like, that's my system, Right?

[A]

Yep. It's a. And it's a good one, by the way. If you're looking for a system out there. Wife, jeans, boots, not necessarily in that order.

[B]

Oh, let me look this up. Okay. I'm going to look up the definition because I think some people are going to be like, that's not a system. But I truly believe it is. So a system is just a set of connected things or parts that work together as a complex whole to achieve a specific common purpose or function.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

It's just connected things. Your brand, your product, your specific solution connects to something that's already connected.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

The. The blue collar dude system is jeans, boots, whiskey, and wife. And that is it.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

If you can fit that watch into that system that already exists, you can sell billions of dollars worth of stuff.

[A]

Yeah. And I think, like, that's going to become the natural thing here at Adapt is like, listen, you've already got the exercise, you've already got the diet, You've already got sleep. You're like, you're doing a lot of things right. This fits into it. This makes it better. This completes the system. This is how you get to the next step without really having to try harder. Like, it fits into what you're doing already.

[B]

100%. Is this so interesting?

[A]

Okay, I'm gonna go write some. Some copy after this episode.

[B]

This is what I love about our episodes and, like, this podcast, because I'm like, inspirational, like, stuff. It's so easy to be a marketer if you're just, like, looking at things this way. Okay, so this borax company launched one of the earliest national household product campaigns. Household manuals teaching this modern cleaning science. Branded 20 mule team displays in general stores. They literally had, like, mules standing out in front of these stores.

[A]

Love that. There Was like, we haven't talked enough about livestock advertising placements.

[B]

Yes, somebody, okay, but this is like the spread, right? Billboards. They were doing brand focused things that had nothing to do with performance just so that people could see them. They were just going for reach. That's it. Shout out to Kevin at high camp. Reach people critical in here. Outside of that, they did free recipe booklets for scientific laundering, Innovative laundry is what they were seeing. I'm like, Borax, damn.

[A]

I mean, borax is killing it.

[B]

They were crushing the marketing. Okay. They didn't push the product at all. The only thing they pushed in all of these different marketing, like processes was the threat. The threat of something you may not be able to see. They told these housewives that like the default mode that they should be in is if you're just using soap, you're leaving behind what matters most. You're not getting enough of it off. Because humans in particular cannot tolerate this feeling of like being out of date or falling behind the norm in particular. So when it touches health, family or identity, you're going to get people to move no matter what. So the payoff here for this particular brand, obviously we're not going to have like definitive metrics because this is 1910 is when this happened.

[A]

But yeah, someone was writing down revenue numbers by hand.

[B]

Like, yeah. In a book somewhere. And somebody's like dusty leverage with a.

[A]

Feather and I don't know, one more pen invented. I have no clue.

[B]

From what we can tell, there's a couple sources that say that this increased sixfold their revenue in the early 1900s. Their profits crossed 1 million, which was enormous freaking figure.

[A]

Dang. A million bucks in bottom Line in 1900.

[B]

100. And they became national staple brand just by telling people they were not getting all of it.

[A]

I love this. I love this. Like, it's called like system marketing.

[B]

Yep. System based marketing.

[A]

Oh, it's okay. Listen, this is a thing you already care about. Cleanliness, hygiene.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

What you're currently doing is fine, but it's not complete.

[B]

100.

[A]

We are going to teach you the complete system. And by the way, we have a product that fits into that. Go do that, guys. Go do that for your brand. And I think we've shown through the example already. Like health and wellness is like probably the obvious one, but you can do it with watches, you could do it with guns, you could do it with alcohol. Like there's anything I think can fit into this kind of system based marketing.

[B]

Oh, now I'm gonna go do this for Tether. Because I mean, Tether already has a ton of systems that we're trying to put in place. But this, this I actually haven' of yet. Which is like, what are the systems that we do in marketing and paid advertising that Tether can fit into? Incredibly easy.

[A]

Oh, I'll write it for you right now.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Because I lived it like the system was like, launch new ads based on solely ad performance, try to figure out what worked and what didn't, and then do more of that thing. And that's fine. That worked for a while. But there's an extra piece of customer research that we hadn't done that. Now once we're doing it, it makes our hit rate on the ads higher and bigger. And now we don't. We don't go 1 for 10 on ads. We go 7 for 10 and instead of hitting a single, we're hitting triples and home runs. That's what it is for you. I'll invoice you for this, but that's.

[B]

I was gonna say we gotta throw that baseball analogy in there because that was good. So everybody systems incredibly important. But what do you complete that's currently incomplete that you can go attack as a brand? Go find that enemy, find that villain. Stick your product right in the middle of what people are already looking at.

[A]

This is great.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

Thanks for listening to brain driven brands sponsored by Borax today. Go make some gak or whatever the hell Sarah was.

[B]

Please tell me somebody knows what that is. I love it. Good episode. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Appreciate you guys listening. If you want to follow me, I'm aralevinger. Anywhere you consume content, he is aatelagos. If you like this show and if you like this episode, go ahead and like subscribe. Share with a friend. Drop us a review when you have a minute. We would appreciate it. Otherwise, have a great week. We'll see you next time.