~ Named enemy ~

"A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

THE CENTRAL QUESTION

"Who or what is the enemy, and how does your brand strike it on your customer's behalf?"

Origins & Symbolism

The rune of the thorn: sharp, defensive, dangerous. It is also the rune of the thurs, the Norse giants who embodied chaos and primal destruction against the order of the Aesir. Thor wields this energy: Mjölnir is a Thurisaz instrument, the giant-slayer's hammer, at once shield and weapon, a force that protects by destroying. The rune-poems carry the same double edge: the Old Icelandic and Norwegian poems name the thurs a "torment of women," and the Old English poem warns the thorn is "painful to every thane who grasps it." This is power that cuts the careless hand that wields it.

The Marketing Lens

Thurisaz is the rune of the named enemy: the villain your brand picks out, names, and strikes. Strong positioning often needs one: a status quo to overthrow, a bad actor to expose, a "wrong way" the product exists to replace. The vector points outward. Not "look what we gave up for you" (that is Tiwaz), but "look what they are doing to you, and here is who fights it."

The enemy can be concrete (a named competitor or industry) or abstract (a condition, a myth, a comfortable lie). Both are Thurisaz. Naming it hands the customer a side to take and the brand a reason to swing. Handle with care: this is the rune whose own lore warns the force can wound the one who wields it. Aim it at a way of doing things, rarely at a person, and choose the enemy as deliberately as Wilde chose his.

Brainstorming Prompts

What is the "wrong way" your industry does things, that your product exists to oppose?
What myth, lie, or bad habit does your product exist to destroy?
If you named one competitor or industry as the villain, who is it, and what would you say to them out loud?
What does your customer already resent about the state of their market, that no one has named for them?
Is your enemy concrete (a named rival) or abstract (a convention, a comfortable lie), and is it the right one to pick a fight with?

Brand in the Wild

Dollar Shave Club's 2012 launch film is one of the purest Thurisaz executions in modern advertising. Made for $4,500 and released in March 2012, it drew 4.75 million views in three months and took 12,000 orders in its first 48 hours. The whole script names the enemy: overpriced razors, Gillette by implication, mocked relentlessly while DSC casts itself as the righteous disruptor. A concrete enemy, struck by name.

Oatly built its voice on an abstract enemy: the unexamined dominance of cow's milk. Its "It's like milk but made for humans" line ran across the UK in 2018, including the London Underground. The same provoke-the-category stance later drew a ban in Ireland (ASAI) for implying cow's milk is not fit for humans, and a separate 2022 UK ruling over its environmental claims. The friction, and the bans, kept Oatly in the conversation, which was the point.

Angle in Action

A copywriting course opens with: "Every 'write better' course sands the edges off your work until it is smooth enough that no one objects. We teach you to write so sharply the wrong people leave on their own." The enemy is convention; the product is the blade. Note the vector: it attacks a way of doing things, not a named person, which is the safest and most repeatable form of Thurisaz.

Pairs Well With

ᚢUruz: pair Thurisaz with Uruz to aim raw strength at the named enemy, turning a callout into a show of force.ᚨAnsuz: pair Thurisaz with Ansuz to name what you are against and declare what you are for in one breath: the full shape of a position.

Don't confuse ᚦ Thurisaz with ᚺ Hagalaz · Sudden Storm (the blow you take, not the blow you strike) or ᛏ Tiwaz · Sacrificial Proof (the cost you choose to bear, not the enemy you name).

Thurisaz ᚦ

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Foundations

Freyr's Aett

Hagal's Aett

Tyr's Aett