I was browsing through various blog posts made other students when I bumped into a blog post “Coke Vs Pepsi” by Pouya Siadat. I never really realized that Pepsi was directly attacking Coke in a number of its commercials. Pouya made an interesting point that Pepsi has had to do that over the years because their sales were lower than Coke’s so they had to prove to the customer that they are better. That got me thinking about whether there are any other companies that have been competing for a number of years. The first example that came to mind was the never-ending  battle between RIM’s Blackberry and Apple’s iPhone. iPhone has been outperforming Blackberry in terms of sales for quite some time now.

It is interesting to note that Apple’s commercials always focused on simplicity and ease of use whereas Blackberry’s commercials were always focused on the phones functionality and it’s usefulness for the business professional.

As RIM’s sales started to decrease and the market share started to drop, they became threatened by the iPhone and made this commercial that directly attacked Apple.

The commercial was not focusing on the functionality of the new phone but rather was designed to show off RIM’s confidence that their product is still better than Apple’s.  It is very interesting to see how some companies shift focus in their marketing campaigns to accommodate various external factors such as change in their own market power and the competition’s influence.