Recently the Nevada Development Authority ran an advertising campaign designed to entice California businesses to relocate from The Golden State to the lower taxed, less regulated Silver State.
The ad campaign formally is entitled “Kiss Your Assets Goodbye” and compares California lawmakers to monkeys. (Rumor has it the monkeys are considering suing for defamation.)
California assemblyman Jose Solorio was so offended that he has funded (okay, the folks who contributed to his campaign fund have funded) a retaliatory campaign that declares:
“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but what happens in California makes the world go ’round.”
Making your competition’s wildly successful slogan the centerpiece of your own campaign is what we in the advertising business call “stupid.”
Want to know why Las Vegas has stuck with that slogan for years? Because it works. It embodies the Vegas brand, which people respond to and remember.
Few readers are likely to remember that prior to the “stays in Vegas” campaign, the city spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to reposition itself as a “family destination.”
For some reason, tourists didn’t buy into the “strippers + gambling = fun for the whole family” approach. Vegas returned to the image it had earned for decades: a place where people go to enjoy pleasures of which they might not partake at home.
The slogan reflects the image that attracts visitors and it’s catchy. It’s become a cultural catch phrase.
Mr. Solorio, let me explain this in simple terms:
1. Las Vegas spends millions of dollars promoting that slogan.
2. The slogan works for Las Vegas (and, by extension, for its Nevada “parent”).
3. You have launched an ad campaign that further promotes the slogan that so successfully promotes Las Vegas.
Ever wonder why Pepsi doesn’t air commercials that say, “Sure, Coca-Cola might be ‘The Real Thing,’ but Pepsi…”?
Of course, it’s not “your” money that’s paying for your “Let’s Shoot Ourselves In The Foot” campaign. It’s your election campaign’s money.
And perhaps we should applaud you for breaking with tradition and not spending your extra campaign dollars on gambling, booze and hookers in Las Vegas.
But I gotta tell you, if the monkeys’ defamation case ever comes to trial, I just might need to testify as a witness for the plaintiffs.
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And therein lies the problem with “competitive advertising” – Thought it was great was I was in school, now I know better. Unless you are the same agency that handle both accounts and you “battle it out for both clients” as I’ve heard done before in a strategic rollout.
But who wins? Yup – the agency, not the client!
I once worked on a committee to come up with a new ad campaign for a county government. The idea behind the campaign was to get young, talented individuals to consider civil service over employment in the private sector. The powers that be couldn’t seem to figure out why they were losing talented applicants to private industry.
By the time I had come aboard, the committee had already agreed on a slogan: “(County Name) Works.” My job was to come up with a series of spots illustrating just how neat and exciting and rewarding civil service can be.
These meetings went on for months. Seriously. And after about four months of these meetings, the directors of the Personnel department – the people that would actually be hiring these new employees beating a path to our door – were finally brought in to explain the hiring process.
At that meeting we discovered that the average length of time between applying for a position and being called back in to test for the position was six months. Or it could be longer. Then, after testing, it could be another couple of months until the applicant (along with several other high scoring applicants) would be called back in to interview. Then another couple of weeks could pass before an applicant was chosen for the position.
It was at this point in the meeting that I raised my hand and asked, “Excuse me, but exactly what about this process works?”
The campaign was never implemented.
The monkeys better get their suit going soon as there won’t be enough left of either California or money in California to make it worth their time.
Dan –
Your premise and argument are sound, as usual.
I’d like to broach the occasional exception – not that it in any way invalidates the general principle, but simply for the sake of your analysis and further discussion.
Not all campaigns that make reference – explicitly or implicitly – to a competitor’s branding or slogan fall on their face. Sometimes the motivation is to get people to think differently about the competitor’s message. Sometimes, a brand with less money to spend seizes an opportunity to co-opt or ride “piggyback” on the competitor’s message, hoping to be remembered whenever the competitor’s commercial runs or his name is mentioned. Obviously this is a slippery slope – your California/Las Vegas illustration a case in point – but it can be done. For example:
– Pepsi/Diet Pepsi and Coke/Diet Coke have gone head-to-head on taste tests in television commercials and at live events, and referenced in radio ads. Obviously both brands have survived. Call it a wash.
– Avis famously established itself as #2 behind Hertz back in the middle and late 60’s, leap-frogging past #s 3-5 (or whoever) in the process.
– Back in the midwest, there was a famous rivalry between two large lumberyards/building supply chains, Menard’s and Plywood Minnesota (the latter owned by former Minnesota Governor Rudy Boschwitz, who was then – in the mid ’70s – the prominent spokesman in his TV and radio ads). Menard’s created an aggressive campaign I remember to this day: “Rudy Schmoody. Come to Menard’s for Low Prices.” (I’ve no idea how that campaign played out financially for the two competitors, but I suspect it didn’t hurt Menard’s.)
Locally I have a client in the TV and appliance business who is also a dealer for DISH Network Satellite TV. Back when Adelphia Cable was still in business (an aside: advertising is of little help to a company whose principal is found guilty of massive embezzlement), they were taking pot shots at the satellite providers. We were doing a “cut the cable” campaign – probably coop-approved by DISH Network, I can’t recall for sure. When Adelphia started running a blitz of anti-dish ads on all their cable channels, we came close to responding with a message that said, in effect, “even the cable company gets its programming delivered *via a satellite dish*. However, before it got to that point, the two local firms’ managers made a truce and their messages took a different direction.
Anyhow, these are just off the top of my head. I’m sure that more will come to mind over the next few days, now that I’m thinking along these lines. But I’d very much like to know what you and your other readers have observed in terms of the exception to the rule.
Thanks!
P.S. Listening to the Nancy Wolfson MP3 last night and during my morning workout. Good stuff. Really helpful.
One thing I want to mention about head-to-head advertising: it rarely works and typically makes both advertisers look bad.
Case in point – the late 80s early 90s war between MCI and AT&T. Millions of dollars were spent by both companies trying to prove superiority over the other through increasingly negative advertising.
The biggest beneficiary of the MCI AT&T wars? Sprint.
Hmm. Apple mentions Windows,and Microsoft comes back with a series of I’m a PC ads. I just enjoy watching the interplay.