Markup View

Author: Lawman592

Jan 15th 2013 at 11:13:56 AM

[[AC:{{Advertising}}]]

* In addition to their usual strategy of depicting users of a particular product as savvy and cool, advertisers will sometimes show the users of a competing product as clueless dweebs and maladroits.  However, ads of this type often come off as heavy-handed and end up backfiring.  (It's generally not good business strategy to inadvertently insult and alienate potential consumers of your product.)  If they are used, they are almost always done in a tongue-in-cheek manner.
** Even the tongue-in-cheek approach can backfire.  A Quizno's ad that took a potshot against Subway and--implicitly--its customers had two men sitting on a bench, one with a toasted Quizno's sub, and one with an untoasted sub that was obviously Subway's. The man with the Quizno's sub says "Untoasted? What, were you raised by wolves?" Cue the second guy ([[Series/TheBigBangTheory a pre-Sheldon]] Creator/JimParsons) having a flashback of himself, still adult and in a three-piece suit, nursing from a mother wolf with her pups. He then responds back in the present "Why yes. Yes, I was." Enough people were put off by this ad that it was taken off the air, then put back on with the nursing scene cut out (but with the "raised by wolves" insult left in).
* This trope is more commonly employed in political advertising.  In these cases, commericials promoting a candidate will depict a supporter or supporters of the opponent as being part of a particular group that's considered unpopular by the majority of voters.  The message being that if members of the "hated" group are supporting the opposing candidate, there must be something wrong with the candidate.
** A fictional example of this is featured in the film HeadOfState when the protagonist (ChrisRock) runs attack ads showing his opponent being praised by Klansmen and Osama bin Laden.