Hi friends,

Do you use WhatsApp? I bet you do. 

But do you know how they position their privacy part in ads?

“No one, not even WhatsApp can see or read your personal messages.”

Which I still doubt, and yet we use it. 

But today I want to give you a copy that was just a restart to a person's writing and became a famous ad for Signal. 

Here's the thing about 2021.

WhatsApp updated their privacy policy. Everyone freaked out. Every tech company used to say the same thing: "We care SO much about your privacy. Trust us. We're different."

Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram. All in the same boat. Telegram was a little different but it had its problems. 

Then an MBA student named Ramkumar sat down to practice his copywriting. He hadn't written an ad in two years. This was just to shake off the rust.

This is what he wrote first: "We care about your privacy."

Generic, right? He thought the same. Because everybody was saying that. 

Then he wrote, "We don't care about your messages."

As you can see, getting better.

Then he wrote something that made him nervous: "We don't care about you."

See? It sounded rude but part of it was to tell the truth for Signal, the encrypted messaging app.

The ad was brutal in its honesty:

"We don't care about you."
"We don't care about your pets."
“We don’t care what you wanna buy for the season.”
"We don't care about the gossips."
"Your love life? Pfff... Nope."

"All we care about is to make Signal more private, secure, and fast with new features. We really, really, really don't have time to listen to your conversations."

Black background. White text. Signal's blue logo. That's it.

No stock photos. No smiling families. No corporate polish.

And here's what happened: People thought it was an official Signal ad. It went viral.

Because while every company was desperately trying to convince you they cared, this ad (accidentally) said the one thing that actually made you trust them.

They don't care about you because they CAN'T profit from your data.
They're a nonprofit.
They're structurally built to ignore you.

The genius? Turning indifference into the ultimate proof of privacy.

If they don't care what you're saying, they're not listening.
If they're not listening, you're safe.

Signal even ran their own campaign later, creating Instagram ads that exposed Facebook's targeting: "You got this ad because you're a newlywed Pilates instructor and you're cartoon crazy."

Facebook banned them immediately. Which proved Signal's point better than any copywriter ever could.

The result? 

During the WhatsApp crisis, Signal became the most downloaded app globally. 

Elon Musk tweeted, "Use Signal." Millions switched.

Sometimes the best way to show you care is to admit what you don't care about.

I wish I knew this when I was working at the startup. 

You see, most people treat SWOT like a checkbox (I was one of them). Fill in the four boxes. Pat yourself on the back. Share it with your stakeholders.

Then wonder why nothing happens.

Here's what Albert Humphrey figured out at Stanford in the 1960s: SWOT isn't about filling boxes. It's about finding the collision points where magic happens.

Let me show you what I mean.

Netflix knew their strength: original content that cost over $15 billion a year to make.

They also saw a threat: Disney+, HBO Max, Apple TV+ all launching with massive budgets.

Most companies would panic. "We need to make MORE content!"

Netflix did something smarter. They looked at where their strength met that threat and asked: "What can we do that they can't?"

Answer: They started expanding into gaming and interactive content. Because while Disney can outspend them on movies, Netflix has data on exactly what keeps people watching.

That's not SWOT. That's the TOWS Matrix.

Here's how it actually works:

You don't just list your strengths and threats separately. You bring them together and ask, "How do I use THIS to defend against THAT?"

Four combinations. Four strategies:

SO Strategy (Strengths + Opportunities): Use what you're great at to grab what's available.

Signal's example? Their strength was structural privacy. The opportunity was WhatsApp's policy change. They combined them into "we don't care about you" positioning.

WO Strategy (Weaknesses + Opportunities): Fix what's broken by jumping on new chances.

If Signal had poor brand awareness (weakness) but social media was blowing up about privacy (opportunity), they'd invest everything in viral social content. Which is exactly what happened when Ramkumar's ad took off.

ST Strategy (Strengths + Threats): Use your advantages to defend against dangers.

Amazon saw regulatory threats coming. Their strength? They'd built AWS into an $80+ billion business. So they diversified revenue away from retail, where regulators were circling.

WT Strategy (Weaknesses + Threats): When you're weak and danger's coming, get small and focused.

This is survival mode. Limited budget and economic downturn? Focus on your most profitable customers only.

Here's what most people miss:

SWOT without the collision points is just a list. It's the COMBINATIONS that create strategy.

Signal's ad worked because they understood this instinctively:

Their structural strength (nonprofit, can't profit from data) met the market opportunity (everyone wants privacy) and created a message that neutralized the competitive threat (Facebook's resources).

One message. Three quadrants colliding.

Try doing this:

Talk soon,

Alen

P.S. I almost made this section about "just do better SWOT analysis" but realized that would be like telling someone to "just write better." The framework isn't the problem. Knowing where the magic happens is. See the difference?