Blog Post #5: Consumers Less Prone to Cliché ads
Bruce Philip the author of the blog article “When Brands Attack”, mentions about the urge that businesses have to become the market leader, through attacking other brands by using advertising. I am sure that most of you have come across a humorous ad, such as the Pepsi ad that mocked Coke (its big competitor), which Paul had showed us in class demonstrating some aspects of value proposition. These brand attacking ads are most of the time a way for companies to directly communicate with audiences as to how their brand and products are more unique than its competitors. In other words it is a way to tweak and influence the audience’s thoughts, in order to attract more consumers into buying their product; hence, increase their demand to gain a competitive advantage compared to its competitors.
Here is an example of Samsung ‘attacking’ Apple’s Iphone product:
One of the points that I highly agree upon in his blogpost is that Brand attacking ads do get reaction out of its consumers, (emotion-wise) like while watching the Samsung commercial posted above, but companies “rarely get results” they want from it; which in this case is to increase in its demand/profit. This is perhaps due to the fact that consumers are less prone to falling into the trap of those brand attacking ads that mock its competitors, as it has become too ‘clichéd’ from my perspective. Therefore, companies can use huge amount of money on advertising but it is “only worth what it costs when people willingly personalize what it says to them”; in other words the ads should be persuasive enough to the consumers to take action rather than just making them feel “amused”. Thus, I believe in the future brand attacking ads would be an unreliable way for companies to gain a competitive advantage and they should perhaps find other strategies make its differentiable factor noticeable to the public compared to its competitors.
Articles Used Links:
Business blog link: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/companies-and-industries/when-brands-attack/
Examples of ‘Brand Attack’ ads: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/blogs-and-comment/ads-mocking-the-competition/