Ensure that you have a solid brand position, both in product/service and in message, and then attack. That’s the formula for a very effective form of advertising. Pundits regularly say that people don’t like to see attack ads – whether for political campaigns or for commercial brands – but they work. A recent case in point is Verizon’s newest set of ads attacking AT&T. At the same time Verizon was running ads for the new Motorola Droid that attacked the iPhone, but their really effective ads are the “They’ve got a map for that” ones. They went after AT&T at AT&T’s weakest point (their network coverage) vis-à-vis their own. YouGov’s BrandIndex is reporting that Verizon’s score has been rising while AT&T’s brand perception has dropped. In fact, AT&T has been hurt so much they filed a lawsuit against Verizon. They might serve themselves better by speeding up their network upgrade instead.

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