When Praising the Competition Benefits Your Brand

The idea for this article came for an article in the Harvard Business Review - yes HBR is a good read for sales people too. (Link at the end of the blog)

It starts off my talking about the traditional rivalries between brands, like Coke and Pepsi and the way companies engage with competitors - normally in an adversarial way such as Coke and Pepsi or Mac vs PC's. "However, new research suggests that praising the competition can actually boost a brand’s image and profitability. For example, in one study, consumers who saw a tweet in which KitKat praised Twix were 34% more likely to buy a KitKat in the next two weeks".

The authors conducted a series of 11 experiments with nearly 4,000 consumers to explore this question, and found that when a brand praised a competitor, consumers developed a more positive attitude towards the brand — and that shift in attitude was directly reflected in consumers’ willingness to buy the brand’s products. I imagine the brand was perceived to be more trustworthy which benefited both brands.

Does this work all the time?

Probably not. The authors show that it works best when it is a directly competing brand, if you simply compliment a non competitive, or non related brand the impact is not as big.

Does this work in sales?

Its excepted wisdom in sales not to rubbish your competition, from a purely selfish point of view, it makes you look self serving and may even insult your customer a little if they have worked with your competitor. There are ways to manipulate this too a little, I think most sales people have used feint praise for a competitor - something that is positive but not of major importance. Some may be more manipulative and offer compliments but really hint at a weakness, such as "they respond well when they are late delivering." Or more serious deception like half truths or lies about your competitor.

In most cases its better not to say too much about a competitor, because you may not know that much or actually mistakenly misrepresent them. Better to focus on your own value, leave it to the customer to weigh up the various merits. Of course some customers like to have your opinion on a competitor and in those cases the intention should be to help your customer - and you do that by giving a honest answer. It should be the sole objective but a benefit of that will be the trust and integrity that the customer may see in you as a result. As with most things its your personal brand that is also at stake - you have to respect your own professionalism, you may not work for your current company for your whole life you need to take your brand and integrity with you. Indeed you never know - you may end up working at your competitor one day!

Link to HBR article: https://hbr.org/2022/03/research-when-praising-the-competition-benefits-your-brand