Every advertiser worries about competitive advertising – you take note when your competitors introduce new ads, and you wonder how well their advertising is working. You might even conduct research to assess consumer reactions to their ads.
But, have you ever really quantified how the competitive campaign is affecting your brand? If you are advertising in a highly competitive category (and these days, who isn’t?), the chances are good that competitive advertising may be producing a significant impact on your brand. For example, if a particular brand successfully convinces consumers that this is a brand your kids will love, or is a brand that solves acne problems, the advertising often also causes consumers to question or discount the value of the other, competing brands as ones that kids love or that can effectively solve acne problems.
The dynamics of how advertising impact cascades across other brands within a category is a phenomenon rarely addressed, but is an important dimension of how advertising works to influence brand perceptions and purchase decisions.
Through our research, across a variety of advertisers categories, we’ve found that significant cross-brand impact occurs quite frequently, and not just when the advertising is making aggressive competitive claims. If you have competitors who advertise to any meaningful degree, there’s a pretty good chance that their campaigns are affecting perceptions of your brand. As such, they’re probably having significant, but unmeasured, impact on sales and future purchase intentions for your brand.
You need to be most concerned about competitive advertising if:
- You and another brand are fighting for similar positions
- The competitive advertising includes a solid ‘reason to believe’ that may cause consumers to question the claims that you are making
- You are the #1 brand in the category
Thankfully, the flip side of coin is that your advertising can take a bite out of them as well! You don’t need a directly competitive or comparative campaign to succeed in scoring competitive wins. Whenever your advertising convinces your target to like you a little better, they presumably like your competitor a little less. Most brand managers don’t pay enough attention to this dynamic. However, the better you understand how all of this works within your category, the more capable you will be to exert positive control over the ever-changing competitive landscape.
