Comparative advertising is used way too often. In most cases, all you do is remind the audience of your competitor’s existence.

Marketing executives sometimes let their egos run away with them stampeding them into odds corners of thought. This is no news to those who have dealt previously with marketing executives. This isn’t to say that these folks are either bad people or bad executives. They just fall prey to their illusion that people are waiting with baited breath for their company’s next commercial stunt. I told you one such story in No Brand Marketing Sets New Standards But Not Trends.

Out-of-control ego may manifest itself in the form of comparative advertising. Your mental eye should already get the picture; it’s advertising claiming ‘product A is better than product B’ or ‘Ketchup is cheaper at store Z than store Y’.

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Unfortunately for marketing or advertising executives making a comparative claim, consumers don’t actively watch advertising. Normally they are carrying on conversations, reading, or getting and gobbling food during commercials. This makes it difficult for any advertisement to reach a target audience with a message. This difficulty is intensified when a commercial asks people to actually think about what is being said.

Every mention of a competitor’s name or product in an advertisement increases the probability that the audience will think the ad that competitor’s. In television as in printed advertising, each visual image of a competitor forms an impression in the minds of the audience. Advertising research commonly finds that a large percentage of the audience will believe that the competitor’s product is the one being advertised. It can be disastrous if a majority, or a large minority, believes this. An advertiser is potentially spending a lot of money to promote a competitor’s product.

The easiest way to avoid this problem is to avoid comparative advertising entirely. Let the product or service advertised carry the day by speaking to your product’s or service’s benefits. If you’re lucky, your competitors will take the comparative advertising approach, do it badly, and you’ll be the beneficiary of free advertising.

This is not to say that good comparative advertising is impossible. It might work in price-based advertising in printed media where competitors’ prices are compared side-by-side. But to indulge in comparative advertising, especially on television or radio, is to run the risk of saddling yourself with an extra burden of risk. It could become the troll’s story for you, where the sack given to the wanderer to carry becomes heavier and heavier with every step. If you feel you must run a comparative ad, please give careful consideration to at least testing it with the target audience to find out the extent to which your competitor will benefit.

If your audience’s brains work only a little bit like mine, the outcome is disastrous anyhow. Seeing in a shop the comparative price tag ‘Competitor Z’s price’ usually just reminds me that I wanted to go there anyhow, and I leave the shop without buying anything at all.