I’ve worked with some marketers and business leaders in the past that just don’t like mocking competition or even talking about their weaknesses in their own marketing. They feel that it is not an ethical way to promote a business.
I agree with marketing having to be ethical, but we are not talking about lying or creating rumors or bad mouthing a business just because they are hurting. We are talking about creatively positioning ourselves as a better product or service in the market.
Today’s tweet by Yahoo! and the retraction that followed later led me to think about this – Is mocking competition really considered as bad marketing?
We see competitor mocking in marketing advertisements all the time. Like Pepsi Mocking Coca-Cola . Or like today when Yahoo! mocked Gmail on Twitter for the service outage. So when is mocking not good marketing? When does it cross the ethical border?
Let’s analyze it.
It’s Funny if it’s True
As Gini Dietrich says in her “ Gin and Topics
