Enemy Building Render

I fed antirender an actual image of Salesforce Park. https://t.co/GkLLF3aP9M pic.twitter.com/5sIdDup02f

— Matt Baran (@mattbaran) December 22, 2025

Many a firm will humblebrag its glossy pro-shot office building. Yet should we know that such image portrayed is merely skin deep. Underneath they may not be all they seem. We can on occasion use such to our advantage.

For not only are they likely hiding facts about where they fall down, they may well tell those with whom we can help misinformation about our capabilities too.

Beyond that crime, they probably also boast a philosophy at odds with ours. Where we actively wish to partner with clients, ensuring proper value accrues and create genuine personal and professional legacy. Yet they may amount to little more than domineering arrogant hit-and-run merchants tying people in and leaving them in alien unsuited procedural concrete.

Whilst never referencing their name in public, inside our own walls their disreputable slant can help drive us.

Enter enemy building. On which I've blogged before down the years. They must never live rent-free in our mind. But knowing what a particular competitor does is the antithesis of how we go about our affairs can be of great help.

An angle of this manifests itself afresh today in the guise of reverse benchmarking.

Think not about using what any competition may do well as your yardstick, but what they do not. Therein sits our opening.

And sticking a pic of their supposedly gleaming office on your salesroom wall in its 'reality' of a dull, grey, unkempt setting bereft of marketing polish can be that small piece of welcome reinforcing render.