The Resurgence of the Combative Ad Campaign

There has been a rather sudden rise in the amount of combative or negative advertising recently. The old rule not to mention competitors brand names seems to have gone out the window.

The majority of this content is coming over from the states, it seems all those negative election ads have provided some inspiration if not a little extra confidence in the method. What’s more, the current economic climate might be forcing brands to be a little more ruthless, and potentially focus a little more on the short term rather than the long term.

Dunkin Donuts have created a campaign based around taste tests that showed people
preferred their coffee to Starbucks. Not a million miles from the old
Pepsi Challenge campaign (but a bit more web 2.0).

Microsoft recently hit back at apple’s negative campaign against them:

Apple hit straight back:

Now we’ve got Moemax very indiscreetly knocking Ikea