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Comparative advertising involves directly comparing specific products to demonstrate superiority and entice consumers. It must be based on verifiable data and is different from parody advertising.
Comparative advertising is an advertising and marketing strategy that involves directly comparing specific products that compete in the marketplace. The idea is to demonstrate that one product is inferior to the other in some way, thereby enticing consumers to buy the obviously superior product. In addition to being used in promoting various goods and services for sale, comparative advertising is also sometimes used in political campaigns.
Many different types of large industries make use of comparative advertising. This particular advertising technique was used to demonstrate how one brand of bleach makes clothes whiter than others, and how one brand of gasoline contains additives that extend engine life and a major competitor does not. There were even cases where this approach relied on public domain information to make comparisons between specific makes and models of vehicles sold by different car manufacturers. Airlines sometimes compare their service records and range of onboard services to a competitor’s as a means of weaning customers away from the competition. In all cases, the focus is on showing why a consumer should choose one product over another.
The actual comparative advertising process must be based on the use of verifiable data that support the claims made in the advertising. For example, if a soft drink company claims that more people prefer the taste of its product to a similar product marketed by a different company, it should base that claim on data collected during actual taste comparisons conducted with consumers. Likewise, if a politician wants to contrast his position on key issues with an opponent’s past actions, the contrast should be done by comparing the actual public service records of the two politicians.
Comparison advertising is different from the similar approach known as parody advertising. Only real products that are on the market are used in the comparative approach. With the parody strategy, the advertiser will compare their products to some kind of unidentified generic product, sometimes called “brand X”. The idea behind the parody approach is to convey the idea that most other products of the same type are all the same, while the product presented by the advertiser is clearly superior.
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