From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Comparative advertising is an advertisement in which a particular product, or service, specifically mentions a competitor by name for the express purpose of showing why the competitor is inferior to the product naming it.This should not be confused with parody advertisements, where a fictional product is being advertised for the purpose of poking fun at the particular advertisement, nor should it be confused with the use of a coined brand name for the purpose of comparing the product without actually naming an actual competitor. ("Wikipedia tastes better and is less filling than theEncyclopedia Galactica.")" - article link
The first, and only time, i have visited America was in 1996, i was 16. I remember sitting in a friends basement watching tv and the adverts coming on. I was surprised at the advertising, with everyone telling me that this form of advertising was perfectly normal over there. I had never seen advertisers being so blatant as to say "we're better than blah". We sat telling our American friends that they just don't do that in the UK and we think that it's better advertising.
Then about 10 years on and it starts on our advertising and I'm shocked! well maybe that's an exaggeration but i can't believe that we finally caught up with the US to advertise with the same techniques.
Doing a little research i have found that this kind of advertising is regulated in the UK by the ECJ (European Court of Justice), where in recent years when any disputes have risen they have decided who's in the right. One article i read described a dispute between to supermarket giant's in the UK, one of which weren't happy at the way the other was using the information they had about them, but according to what I've read so long as the adverts conform to directive 84/450 which in brief states that so long as the advert is:
- not misleading;does not create confusion;
- does not discredit or denigrate the third party trademarks;
- does not take unfair advantage of the reputation of a trademark; and
- does not present goods or services as imitations or replicas of goods or services bearing a protected trademark or trade name.
Every time an advert comes on tv now for one of the supermarket giants and it has price comparisons it gets me really angry. I feel it is the lowest form of advertising, it's like high school "we're better than you" groups.
I know businesses try to keep up with what their competitors are doing and they evaluated it as to how this compares to what they are doing but to then go out and say we're better than them because we're cheaper, means nothing. Walk around your large local supermarket you know the 2 I'll mean and look at the prices for products "we're cheaper than B by 1p"! Well wow! is this what it is reduced to we're cheaper because we can knock a penny of the price. A supermarket can win an award by having the cheapest products because they knock 1p off their prices to ensure the ones they can't give you a decent discount on they can still be cheaper.
So when they say we have 10,000 product cheaper than B it's only because we've knocked 1p of about 75% of them.
I'm wailing on supermarkets as they are most prominent on tv doing it just now but banks are just as bad, if i hear Howard signing once more about comparisons I'll shoot myself!!
I like the adverts used just now by 2 specific companies for the same reason, they show you something that is worthwhile using about their company.
For example: Morrison's main adverts just now are showing that their butchers are in house, they are highly trained and the meat freshly prepared for you. Their butcher will help you pick the right piece of meat for what you're wanting to cook because they are highly trained and friendly. All just for you.
The Royal Bank of Scotland's adverts just now are telling you how they have branches open on a Saturday. Why? because if your to busy during the week you can do it on your day of, they're there for you when you need it.
These 2 companies are showing that they have something, that may not necessarily be unique to them, but it's certainly something that people will look at and think Hey that could be helpful, my bank or supermarket doesn't do that.
The other thing that i don't like about comparative advertising is that your competitor can use your trademark in their advertising. This just should not be allowed the reason something is trademarked is to stop other from using it.
This just all seems like below the belt advertising, what happened to being creative when doing advertising, this is just lazy advertising.
My favourite response to comparative advertising is Windows reply to Mac advert that PC's were old, slow, uncreative and almost useless. But Windows came back with a great set of adverts showing a creative, unique and varied group of people that use a PC for work and play, no mention of their competitors, just taking their turn to respond to the claim that PC's can't do much of anything.
In my mind this is creative advertising, as this advert would have worked well on it's own and now some time on from those adverts it does work well as a stand alone advert and not a response to a claim made by a competitor.
I feel that it is up to businesses to show that it's creative advertising that is going to get people further, showing customers them broader scope of benefits that they'll get from using your business, not just a saving on price because using a business should be more than that. The whole experience should be something to shout about.
Here are the websites that i used for research into this:
http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/in-practice/comparative-advertising-ecj-fizzes-it
http://www.lawdit.co.uk/reading_room/room/view_article.asp?name=../articles/comparative%20advertising.htm
http://www.out-law.com/page-7985
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advertising
There were a couple more but I've lost the links, which i am looking to find to add in here.
No comments:
Post a Comment