Advertising

Dueling Brands Pick Up Where Politicians Leave Off

By STUART ELLIOTT

Published: November 3, 2008

ELECTION Day will bring an end to the negative political advertising that has inundated the country. But it will not mean an end to negative advertising.

An image from a response ad by Microsoft meant to counter a campaign from Apple that characterizes PCs as geeky.

Multimedia

Dunkin' Teases Starbucks

Campbell Goes Negative

With a mode reminiscent of political ads, Campbell Soup, in a campaign for its Select Harvest line, attacks Progresso by name.

Dunkin’ Brands goes after Starbucks, promoting a Web site that features the results of a taste test that favored its coffee.

That is because marketers of consumer products, borrowing a page from the electoral playbook, are becoming more willing to run aggressive ads in which brands attack their competitors by name. A major reason for the growing popularity of such ads is the faltering economy, on the theory that when times are hard, you should hit your opponent harder.

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What Marketers Can Learn From Obama's Campaign Change -- and Positioning -- You Can Believe in By Al Ries

Nov. 4, 2008, will go down in history as the biggest day ever in the history of marketing.

Take a relatively unknown man. Younger than all of his opponents. Black. With a bad-sounding name. Consider his first opponent: the best-known woman in America, connected to one of the most successful politicians in history. Then consider his second opponent: a well-known war hero with a long, distinguished record as a U.S. senator.

Obama owns the 'change' idea in voters' minds.

Photo Credit: AP

It didn't matter. Barack Obama had a better marketing strategy than either of them. "Change.
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