Here is an excellent slideshare from a writer's workshop at SXSW '11 on writing the right story.
Who is the Enemy?
Do you know who your customer's enemy is? As importantly, do you state who they are out loud? Your marketing story is lacking if you don't.
We'll assume you know your protagonist, the customer, fairly well. Your marketing story needs to help them identify their enemy. Often our customers know they have problems, they just don't know who the enemy is. When that's the case, they don't know who or how to fight. Help them identify their antagonist and give them the tools to vanquish their enemy. People can't resist the epic battles between good and evil. Notice I didn't see the adventures of the good. It's not much of an adventure - or a very good story - without overcoming adversity or evil.
HubSpot is a great example of this idea in practice. In this recent blog post 8 Lessons.
Point 4 reveals how identifying an enemy was critical to their success.
"You Need An Enemy."
"For some reason, humans can’t resist the cops & robbers theme. When you create your marketing strategy, even if you are creating a new category, you need to polarize. In our case, we picked “outbound marketing” as the enemy. I remember my co-founder showing a slide of a kitten one time and stating something like “every time you buy a list and spam it, a kitten dies.”
Read the complete article on HubSpot blog post.