How come everyone just gets along?

It's a little disappointing to me that very few brands really go after their competition anymore. Sure the competition could be mentioned but it's almost always in a simple "we have a better offer" way. It's even rarer to hear the actual name of a competitor mentioned. There's just never any venom involved. Most of the time a company simply highlights why they stand out from the competition without resorting to full out bashing their competitors. It definitely wasn't always like that from what I remember.


It used to be many commercials were similar to what you see in election ads. You know the ones where instead of highlighting why this candidate is the right choice, they simply bash the other candidate and state why they are a terrible person? Well there were other companies doing this too.


I remember when just about every single Pepsi commercial that came out had little to do with why Pepsi was good, but more about how much better it was than Coke. Literally every single commercial just bashed Coke. If you look up some of Pepsi's old commercials it's amazing how often this happened. Whether it was done in a comical way, or with "real" footage from "actual" taste tests (I'm a Coke drinker so please forgive my one sidedness), Pepsi really went for the throat when it came to Coke.


I always found it funny that Coke never really bothered to respond to this in their own commercials, probably because they knew they didn't have to. It made Pepsi come off as sort of the whiny little brother who was jealous of all the attention their older sibling is getting. Maybe this is why you don't see as much of it these days, I don't know.

To go back to the world of video games for a moment (something I will most likely do at least 8 more times throughout the rest of this blog) I remember back when video game companies would just flat out rip into their competitors. Well mostly it was just companies ripping into Nintendo since they were on top at the time. Companies like Sega and Sony would spend a good chunk of their advertising just ripping into Nintendo. You never see this anymore which is strange because I would say the war between video game consoles is bigger than ever right now.
It’s a little hard to put into words but there is quite a line between simply highlighting what makes you stand out from your competitors, versus just flat out attacking them and basically telling the audience why that company sucks. I can remember some of these older commercials mentioned above where the company being advertising didn’t even really talk about what makes them a good choice. They simply tore into the competition and called it a day. It was always a little fun just seeing how they were going to about it and the low blows some of the companies were willing to take. It’s kind of a backwards way of brand positioning since instead of positioning yourself as “the company that’s great because…”, you attempt to position your competition as basically “the company who sucks because…”.

Overall it’s a very strange way of advertising and there’s probably good reason why you don’t really see it these days. …At this point you’re probably expecting me to explain what that good reason is. Sadly I’m afraid that moment isn’t coming because I really have no idea. I just wanted to express my disappointment that companies very rarely use this method of going after the competition anymore. Frankly I would love to see it not only make a return, but a return with a vengeance! How amazing would it be if Crest released a commercial where they don’t even mention Crest at all. Instead the whole commercial is just a guy in a Colgate toothpaste tube costume, running around swearing at people, taking huge slugs from a bottle of whisky and picking fights with children? I don’t know about you but I would be at the store later that same day buying all the Crest products I could get my hands on.