The Marketing Place

New Post! Marketing 'Lawyers Up'

By Anne Simons

Suing a competitor and issuing cease and desist orders on the basis of a competitors’ marketing claims isn’t new. What is new is the increased urgency of these legal skirmishes and their increased presence in marketing strategy.

This past Fall AT&T sued Verizon Wireless over Verizon’s “There’s a map for that” ad. The ad plays on Apple’s “there’s an App for that” slogan---but that’s not the problem. At issue is a map in the ad that shows that Verizon has 5 times more 3G coverage than AT&T, but doesn't show that the gaps in AT&T 3G coverage might be covered by AT&T's 2G network.

At issue, of course, is market share. When brand awareness levels are nearly universal, purchase cycles are several months long, and product differentiation is infinitesimal and fleeting, it’s a given increased market share has to come at competitors’ expense. Witness the spate of lawsuits as competing brands, including Campbell’s Soup vs. Progresso, and Dove vs. Pantene have resorted to legal maneuvering to protect market share.

Dominos is the most recent to enter the fray. Dominos is in the middle of an impressive “Pizza Turnaround” campaign, promoting a new, improved product.  But earlier this evening I spotted a TV ad that touts their legal challenge to Papa John’s claims of “better ingredients, better pizza, and Papa Johns’ defense that the claim is simply puffery. The Domino’s ad rhetorically asks viewers, “What’s puffery?” and explains that the legal definition of puffery is a statement based on opinion, not fact.

One benefit of ads like these is that trash talking can fire up internal stakeholders, and that’s no small thing. But at the end of the day, you have to wonder how much notice consumers really take of all the legal maneuvering between brands. And if consumers take notice, you have to wonder how sustained is the benefit?

Brand strategy best practices suggest that the most effective way of spurring consumer switching is to meet their needs better than their current brand. That means establishing real differences in product features and benefits, an arduous task. It’s understandable that brands are looking at other ways of capturing marketing share, including lawyering up. But it’s hard to imagine that the legal maneuvering will make much of an impression on consumers – after all, what’s in it for them?

 

So, what do you think? Does this legal maneuvering help or hinder the growth of the brand?

My 2010 Blogging Resolutions

I had decided not to make any personal New Year’s resolutions because I won’t remember them by the time February rolls around.  But the urge to make resolutions at the beginning of a New Year, especially a new decade, just doesn’t go away that easily. So I thought, brand new blog, how about some resolutions focused on blogging? Here goes:  

There are sooo many great marketing, technology, social media, trend, research, brand strategy, entrepreneurial blogs, Twitter and news sites, but there are only so many hours in a day. So my first resolution is to be pickier about the feeds I subscribe to. I just finished culling my list to less than 50. Trust me, that’s a lot less than it used to be, but it seems like 20 or so would be a more manageable number. Keepers include TechCrunch (great for keeping up-to-date on new technology companies and trends), Problogger (advice for people who write blogs), NielsenWire (consumer trends), SheGeeks.net, (insights and advice on social media and technology) and John Quelch, a Harvard Business School professor specializing in marketing research. Everything else at this point is up for grabs. Got any recommendations?
 

My second blogging resolution is to do a better job tapping into the insights and knowledge of other bloggers, and writers, through more participation on their blogs, and hopefully persuading some of them to share their thoughts here. I’ve been a blogger for around five years now and I’ve met some incredibly wonderful and supportive people. It really is the best thing about blogging so this resolution I really want to work hard to keep.

My final blogging resolution (hope) is to make this blog a place where folks will want to hang out and share their thoughts, ask questions and offer advice about marketing. The interactions with visitors, like bloggers and writers is what makes blogging a rich experience, on both sides of the keyboard.
 

So, that’s it; my blogging resolutions for 2010. 
 

What about you? Are you making resolutions for the New Year? Care to share?

 

Happy New Blog!

Welcome to The Marketing Place!

I’ve been writing the Marketing Smarts column for the Atlanta Tribune magazine for two and a half years. Time flies. And now we’re kicking off the New Year with The Marketing Place blog. I’m pretty excited that I’ve been invited to host it because I’m pretty excited about the new folks I’ll get to meet and the great conversations we’ll have. There isn’t a better or more timely, topic than marketing.  Marketing is at the root of every business’s success; you can have the best product (or service) in the world, but no one’s going to know about it or buy it without marketing.

Wishing you a healthy, happy and successful 2010!