Is negative advertising a desperate technique or a smart one?
It can be both desperate and smart. It is often used in desperation. Since there is a winner-take-all deadline on Election Day, a candidate trailing in polls is often tempted to pull down the opponent rather than develop a positive case for himself, which usually takes a longer period of time. The objective is to raise doubts about the opponent in minds of the electors—desperate, but often effective against an attractive but relatively unknown candidate such as [Barack] Obama. How have you seen negative ads work effectively in the consumer-product context? In the business world, such advertising is usually referred to as comparison advertising. Coke would never run a 30-second ad even mentioning Pepsi, let alone raising doubts about the No. 2 brand. Pepsi, on the other hand, ran the highly effective Pepsi Challenge comparison ad campaign. What lessons can political candidates learn from corporate marketing tactics? If you don’t develop a clear and coherent position for your own brand a
