<story><title>Lying Microsoft Advertising</title><url>http://www.curi.us/1571-lying-microsoft-advertising</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>anxx</author><text>It&apos;s only in the US that I have seen advertisements for a product include direct bashing of a competitor&apos;s product. I am not talking about a list of features where you show in which way yours is superior; that is still acceptable (although also deceiving much of the time). I am talking about ads like the Nimoy-Quinto Audi commercial where Nimoy had stupid problems fitting stuff into the Mercedes.&lt;p&gt;This is such a jarring way to advertise, it&apos;s like watching a bully beat a defenseless kid - does anybody feel more sympathy towards the product this way?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smacktoward</author><text>The conventional wisdom is that you should punch up, not down. In other words, if you&apos;re behind the market leader, it&apos;s OK to throw a punch at it in your ads, because your product isn&apos;t as widely known or understood as theirs is. But if you &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; the market leader, you don&apos;t throw punches at competitors, because you&apos;re already winning and doing so just reminds the viewer/reader/whatever that other alternatives exist.&lt;p&gt;This mitigates the &quot;defenseless kid&quot; syndrome a bit, because if you only punch up you&apos;re by definition only taking on products that are stronger in the marketplace than yours is.&lt;p&gt;You can see this in action by comparing Apple&apos;s ads. They had no problem running the &quot;I&apos;m a Mac&quot; ads when their product (the Mac) was far behind the market leader (Windows PCs). But iPad ads don&apos;t do product comparisons, because the iPad owns the tablet market so there&apos;s no upside to reminding people that &quot;tablet&quot; does not necessarily equal &quot;iPad.&quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Lying Microsoft Advertising</title><url>http://www.curi.us/1571-lying-microsoft-advertising</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>anxx</author><text>It&apos;s only in the US that I have seen advertisements for a product include direct bashing of a competitor&apos;s product. I am not talking about a list of features where you show in which way yours is superior; that is still acceptable (although also deceiving much of the time). I am talking about ads like the Nimoy-Quinto Audi commercial where Nimoy had stupid problems fitting stuff into the Mercedes.&lt;p&gt;This is such a jarring way to advertise, it&apos;s like watching a bully beat a defenseless kid - does anybody feel more sympathy towards the product this way?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Someone</author><text>In the EU, such advertisements are illegal. &lt;a href=&quot;http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/consumers/consumer_information/l32010_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/consumers/consumer_in...&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&quot;Comparative advertising&lt;p&gt;Comparative advertising explicitly or by implication makes reference to a competitor or competing goods or services.&lt;p&gt;This type of advertising is only permitted when it is not misleading. It can be a legitimate means of informing consumers of what is in their interests. Therefore, in particular, the comparisons should:&lt;p&gt;- relate to goods or services which meet the same needs or are intended for the same purpose;&lt;p&gt;- relate to products with the same designation of origin;&lt;p&gt;- deal objectively with the material, relevant, verifiable and representative features of those goods or services, which may include price;&lt;p&gt;- avoid creating confusion between traders, and should not discredit, imitate or take advantage of the trade mark or trade names of a competitor.&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That is one reason why you will not see such advertising in the EU. Another may be cultural; in some EU countries, all comparative advertising was illegal before this EU directive (yes, you could not even show your product as being inferior in every way)&lt;p&gt;Finally, some would see this as the offenseless kid attempting to beat the captain of the boxing team.</text></comment>