Among the most important aspects of telling a story about a person, company or product is distinguishing it from its competitors. Communicating your differentiating factors is how you set yourself apart and show your audience why your brand is worth their attention. Setting yourself apart is generally accomplished in two ways: indirectly through building a positive case for your virtues, or directly by drawing negative attention to your competitors.
This woman is trying to tell her story by talking up her competitor’s perceived flaws.
Going Negative Is Easy And Natural
A case study in these two approaches can easily be seen in any political race around the country. One genre of political advertising praises a candidate’s accomplishments and highlights a few carefully scripted points about their intentions. These portrayals, with varying degrees of veracity, build a positive case for the candidate. The other, and often more prominent, genre of political advertising “go negative” and attack the character, accomplishments and beliefs of a competing politician. These negative portrayals seek to distinguish a politician by positing them as the natural contrast to an unflattering candidate.
As a strategic communications pro it is your job to choose the appropriate messaging strategy to distinguish your brand and its story. For better or worse, we are all, collectively, drawn more strongly to the negative than we are to the positive. For perhaps the same reason we slow down to get a glimpse of an accident on the other side of a highway, our attention is immediately grabbed when we’re told of the horrible, no-good, very-bad qualities of an individual, company or product.
…And Can Be Hard To Spot
So the temptation to go negative will always be there. It will always be easy, and even natural, to pitch yourself by criticizing others in your field. It’s possible to do this even without directly naming competitors by saying things like “so-and-so’s technology is inferior.” The same attitude can manifest itself more obliquely in passive phrases like “others will focus their attention on inefficient practices.” And certainly, the history of advertising is full of examples of effective campaigns that hinged on painting competitors in unflattering light. Take, for example, the “Mac vs. PC” commercials that went viral at a time when the concept of viral was just being recognized.
But strategic communications isn’t politics and it isn’t advertising. In this line of work, going negative is more often than not likely to be an avoidable descent into divisive rhetoric that could do as much to turn off potential contacts and leads as it will to make your case effectively. And it’s unlikely to get you the coverage you want. Sure, a pithy shot at a well-known competitor might gain a bit of coverage for a perceived controversy value. But it is by no means guaranteed to bring favorable coverage to your brand.
Stick To Telling Your Story, Not Your Competitor’s
If you’ve got a strong story, you won’t need to dip into throwing mud on your competitors. You’ll do better to get the attention you want by highlighting all that you excel at it. If you’re making a convincing enough case, your competitors’ inferiority will be communicated as a given. It’s not just a matter of taking the moral high ground. It’s smart business. In a communications role you are responsible for interacting with outsiders at a number of levels, and it will always be a possibility that negative language will alienate individuals who may otherwise be interested in your story. Positivity, however, has no downsides. And after all, your job is to tell your own brand’s story, not your competitor’s!
