brinksmanship
Posted by Abe Sauer on February 22, 2010 01:54 PM
With the economy tight and ad dollars tighter, the tactic of "going negative" against competitor brands has become more popular. The trend is expected to continue through 2010.
One of the more effective current examples is Fedex and its "Brown Bailout" campaign.
Brownbailout.com (“brown” referring to how UPS has branded itself) stands in opposition to the government "bailout" of the United Parcel Service (UPS).
The website claims that, “UPS lobbyists have buried a short 230-word legislative bailout deep inside the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2009 currently before Congress." It alleges that the bailout would force Fedex Express (an airline) to operate under trucking rules that have never applied to airlines. According to Brownbailout.com, this will wipe out UPS’s competition and cripple Fedex by limiting competition for overnight deliveries.
The site hosts a stocked "Newsroom" of information about the bailout as well as a blog and an "Act Now" page asking visitors to become advocates. It offers links to write to legislators and a petition. The term "bailout" is used heavily.
Meanwhile, UPS argues that it isn't a bailout at all, but an act that would bring FedEx employees under the National Labor Relations Act, allowing them (like UPS employees) to unionize locally. And an op-ed written by Fedex’s CEO, which focuses on the labor angle, seems to confirm that Congress’ upcoming vote is not exactly a “bailout,” as the website would like you to believe.
Still, FedEx is quietly promoting the Brown Bailout site across the web, especially on sites tied to the conservative Tea Party movement. It clearly sees this group of fiscally conservative, anti-bailout activists as potentially sympathetic to its cause and has employed all the current connotations of "bailout" to negatively brand its competition.
In the next year, we should expect to see more of this kind of down-and-dirty brand campaigning.
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