The never mention the competion maxim, if that actually ever was one, is severly outdated - by several decades.
Turn on the TV. Quiznos doing tastes test commericals against Subway - or just showing the two sandwiches side-by-side. Subway comparing the amount of calories, fat, and sodium in their 6 inch subs to that in a Burger King Whooper and a MacDonald's Big Mac. One of the biggest marketing trends in Auto Insurance is to promote the fact that their websites give you quotes from all of their major competitors - (some, like Esurance, even help you to buy the policy from one of their competitors). Progressive, Geico, State Farm, Esurance. They all use direct by-name comparisons to their competitors. Maybe it doesn't apply in the technology world. Wrong. I have eight words for you. "Hi, I'm a Mac." "And I'm a PC." Both "Don't mention the competition" and "Don't knock the competition" do not apply at all anymore - if they ever did. That last example mentions this particular competitor (Microsoft) directly. I would be happy to go on with another example after another example after another example of successful big-budget advertising campaigns - some of which are held as the best, most successful campaigns in recent years, like the "I'm a Mac" ones - that blow those so-called "maxims" out of the water. And it's not a new trend. Ever heard of the "Pepsi challenge"? On 3/31/07, John McCreesh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Sat, March 31, 2007 09:08, Lars D. Noodén wrote: > On Fri, 30 Mar 2007, Kirill Palagin (Y) wrote: > >> There is a marketing maxim "never mention the opposition". We have to >> embrace it at least in Marketing. > > +1 It's usually stated as "don't knock the opposition", which is subtly different :-) Two examples where it pays to mention the opposition: If we change the title of a Press Release from "OpenOffice.org Releases New Version of Free Software" to "OpenOffice.org Releases New Version of Free Software alternative to Microsoft Office" we get far more page impressions. Microsoft has a zillion dollar advertising budget; we have nix. If Microsoft launch an anti-piracy campaign, we turn it to our advantage by offering OOo as the best way to get legal - so-called "guerilla marketing". It's hard to do this without mentioning Microsoft :-) John --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- - Chad Smith http://www.chadwsmith.com/
