Should You Advertise Against Competitors?
Should You Advertise Against Competitors?
The Pros and Cons of Attack Campaigns
Last week at the Beloved Tech Brands Conference, Scott Holden, CMO of Brex, shared highlights of their “competitive punch-up” campaign against Concur. I had enjoyed seeing this advertising around the Bay Area. He said they had taken the offensive because Concur had 65% market share and was not beloved. Additionally, Brex was expanding their offering from cards to expense management, so by comparing themselves to Concur, they attached themselves to the new category. The campaign was highly successful, garnering awareness, 200,000 web visits, and millions of dollars in pipeline. Check out the ads:
Taking on competitors has some pros and cons:
PRO: Taking on a bigger competitor gets you recognized in their market
PRO: Listing competitors can define the market
CON: Taking on smaller competitors can validate their place and give them more exposure
CON: Attacking competitors can give you an aggressive vibe that may or may not be in your brand voice
I spent many years at Oracle running awareness advertising. Many of our ads were attack ads supported by market data. These ads ran on the front page of the WSJ every week. One of my favorite ads was the database performance ad below that compared Sun’s “jet speed” to HP’s “tricycle speed.” We had an alternative to this ad that was Larry’s America’s Cup winning boat as Oracle and a struggling swimmer as HP. Oracle’s brand vibe was aggressive and confrontational.
And while Oracle had a number of attack ads against Salesforce, Salesforce also struck back with competitive attack ads of their own, here showing market dominance without concern of highlighting any lesser competitors:
There are different levels of competitive attack techniques you can use. Billboards like Scott’s or entire advertising campaigns are the most visible. But even if you decide not to mention your competitors directly in advertising, you may need to provide support online for prospects or certainly in sales materials to help your field team sell against tough competitors. At Atlassian, we found that owning the top comparison terms against competitors was a critical SEO hack. If you don’t provide it, the competitor will. So, for instance, on a “Jira vs. Asana” search, the #1 organic result is a page that highlights the strengths of JIRA and does a head-to-head comparison (on our terms). I love this style and recommend it frequently. Even the effort of creating the right comparison points is a great experience for structuring your thoughts and roadmap on differentiation.
What are some of your favorite competitive campaigns or materials?
Carilu Dietrich is a former CMO, most notably the head of marketing that took Atlassian public. She currently advises CEOs and CMOs of high-growth tech companies. Carilu helps leaders operationalize the chaos of scale, see around corners, and improve marketing and company performance.