There is an advertising war taking place in South Florida and things are really heating up, which is funny because the war is between two local air conditioning companies. The first company, Air Around The Clock, put up a number of roadside billboards with a campaign telling motorists “Your Wife Is Hot…better get your a/c fixed.” Pretty clever I might add. Several weeks passed and a competitor, All Year Cooling, started placing its own roadside billboards with a message telling motorists “Your Wife Is Not Hot…because you called All Year Cooling.”
There are a number of different views on the strategy employed by All Year Cooling. I’m not a big fan on getting involved with your competitor in advertising campaigns when you’re trying to establish your own brand. As I’m sure you can imagine, Air Around The Clock is pursuing legal action and the attention is more negative publicity and PR for All Year Cooling.
I’ve always been a big believer that you should separate your brand from the competition (and especially not call attention to them in advertising) when you are a small business trying to establish your own brand. The only time this would ever make sense is when you are truly David and you want to steal marketing thunder from Goliath. But since Goliath will always have a bigger legal arsenal than you, it’s probably not going to work out in David’s favor in the end.
The other time this would make sense is when both brands are already established, as in the case with Apple’s “PC vs. Mac” ads. This campaign has been highly successful because Apple is already an established company. I doubt the ads would work at all if Apple was a brand new company no one had ever heard of.
When establishing your own brand identity it’s better to devise your own branding that calls attention to your points of differentiation based on features and benefits. In the end, you want people to remember you and what makes you the best company. It’s purely counterproductive to have people think of both you AND your competition, even if the competition is blatantly obvious when it comes to mindshare.
What do you think of the strategy? Care to debate my way of thinking on this one?
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I enjoy the many examples of outdoor advertisers battling it out. With the larger companies and agencies, the result is usually clever and well executed (see BMW vs Audi http://www.bmwblog.com/2009/04/13/billboards-war-bmw-vs-audi/). With small, local businesses such as this example, it’s often immature and petty.
Outside of billboards, I think it depends on the execution. The new Verizon “there’s a map for that” ads seem to have a mixed reaction for targeting Apple (competitor?).
Hey Mark I agree with you. I think the Mac vs. PC ads are fantastic, really. I’m just skeptical when it’s a company no one’s ever heard of. You get that perception of being a little whiney. Not good.