Dare to Compare!It has been a banner year for computer ads making their own headlines in the US and Japan. And I don't mean just on the Internet. When Compaq moved on digital Equipment this January, Hewlett-Packard (HP) promptly seized the opportunity to exploit the inherent FUD factor involved in any takeover. In February HP ran an attack ad stirring up Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt by underscoring Compaq's limited focus on NT, while implying that Digital's recent shift towards NT could see customers using its OpenVMS and Unix operating systems, fall through the takeover cracks. "Now Digital's Unix customers may be wondering what will happen to them. If you're using OpenVMS, Digital Unix or NT on Alpha in your enterprise, you might want to talk to a company that's been dedicated to heterogeneous enterprise computing for the last twenty years, as opposed to last month," jabbed the waspish HP ad, which ran in the Asian Wall Street Journal. HP's venom was, in part, generated by Eckhard Pfeiffer, head of Compaq. Before the Digital takeover, Pfeiffer had frequently declared in public that Compaq was soon destined to become a $40 billion company, second only to IBM--as if its much larger rival, HP, didn't exist. Compaq/Digital responded to the HP assault with a surprisingly feeble ad in March, which led off with, "And now for the realities--instead of the rumors--about the future of Digital technologies." It went on to stress that Digital's three operating systems and Alpha will continue to be supported, "no matter whose name is on the door." Perhaps, but that's such a lame rejoinder, I wouldn't be surprised if some Digital customer decided to go knocking on HP's door. Meanwhile, Apple Computer has come in for criticism for its series of "Think Different" ads--and not just from prissy pop grammarians who insist we all should think differently. The ads portray photos of 20-century thinkers, artists and leaders who have bucked convention. But some industry commentators chastised Apple for "exploiting" the images of religious people like Martin Luther King to advertise the Macintosh, even though the tasteful black-and-white photos are used to make a clever point about human nature, and do not besmirch the dignity of the people concerned. Similar criticism of Apple's ads did not emerged in Japan, where insensitivity to foreign religious icons is the downside of a tolerant culture that remains naive about such matters. Crass ignorance has led to Leonardo DaVinci's painting of the Last Supper, for instance, being used in the most boorish of spoof ads. Yet I can hardly imagine the uproar a foreign commercial would cause that dared portray Japan's deceased God-Emperor in similar mock fashion. Japanese corporations, on the other hand, exhibit extraordinary sensitivity in advertising--when it comes to their competitors. In fact, it only became possible to run comparative ads in 1987, when the Fair Trade Commission deemed the people of this nanny nation were at last mature enough to deal with data describing the differences between competitors' products. So far, however, almost the only companies taking full advantage of this newfound freedom of expression have been foreign. One partial exception occurred in 1992, when NEC suggested through ads that the cheaper DOS/V IBM-compatible PCs then being introduced, were also cheap in quality, compared to NEC's proprietary PCs. While NEC mentioned no names, it was clearly a dig at Compaq, which had just triggered a PC price revolution in Japan. Compaq lost no time in responding vigorously with an ad directly comparing the specs of its world-standard PC to NEC's PC 98 equivalent. More recently, Fujitsu created interest with an ad campaign proclaiming itself the "number one" shipper of the world-standard PC in Japan. The ads were a direct nose thumbing at NEC, which is the overall number one Japanese PC vender, when shipments of its proprietary system are included. Fujitsu finally dropped the campaign this August, having made its point, which went unchallenged by NEC. In explaining the local mindset, a Japanese friend in the computer media business makes the point that, "We don't think it is appropriate to discount our competitors' products. If we did, they would do the same thing to our products. No products are perfect." That's true, but woefully wimpy. Certain products and service do have significant advantages over others. In such cases, a clever, comparative ad is often the quickest and most effective way to let customers know. But taking such a step would require corporations to dare to compare, which will only happen if they think different by putting their customers ahead of their competitors.
Do you agree? Or think different? Or differently? Let John know at boyd@gol.com. |
