This tactic shows who wins when the audience does nothing. It doesn't ask people to like you — it shows them they've been funding the wrong side. The moment an audience realises they're complicit, the brief changes entirely. You're not selling a switch. You're offering an exit.
Here are five tactics from the Storytelling Engine that hand the villain the microphone — and let them do the work.
- Expose Real Villains in Disguise
- Put the Problem in Their Mouth
- Create Fake Companies That Profit From Harm
- Turn Hidden Harms Into Familiar Evil
- Bring Satirical Evil to Life
1. Expose Real Villains in Disguise
Take something the audience already trusts — and show how it's being used against them.
The Most Important Smartphone Ad — Refuge, BBH, 2021
The brief: raise awareness of tech-enabled domestic abuse. BBH's answer was a spoof product launch — staged with the production gloss of a real smartphone ad — that revealed how abusers twist smartphone features and apps into instruments of control. The reframe was total: the helpful becomes harmful, the convenient becomes sinister. It sparked a national conversation about digital domestic abuse.
