A little healthy (and secret) competition

The very fulcrum on which the lever of capitalism lifts is competition. Without competition there is little financial incentive for innovation, fair pricing, or customer friendly business practice –without debate, all good things.

Competition also breeds another behavior in the american consumer space, that of negative advertising. It's rare in today's marketplace for one brand to strongly advertise against another. Subtle comparison, distracting wordplay, misdirection, and allusion are the order of the day. In spite of the active use of mudslinging in the political sector it is somehow considered uncouth in consumer advertising and outright inappropriate in B2B.

[A quick editorial aside: I personally don't understand this phenomenon at all. Ad execs often grow to loath their competition, and in private will endlessly rag on the "the other guy." The fact that there is any modicum of restraint or illusion of proper manners in their marketing initiatives boggles the mind.]

So when FedEx launched their new brownbailout.com website I was surprised. The site has the look and feel of a grassroots protest site, complete with loads of numbers, a "contact your senator" button, and way more informational content than you would usually find in a corporate microsite. All of this directed at calling out FedEx's biggest rival, UPS.

They even go so far as to parody UPS' whiteboard commercials (complete with shoddy wigsmanship and mom-safe Ben Gibbard-esqu soundtrack).



It's a bold move from FedEx, but don't think this means they've gone all rebel yell/fight the power on us yet. As far as I can tell they haven't done much advertising of this site, or of their political initiatives to resist UPS' lobbying. Keeping your negative ads on the downlow isn't exactly the same as never making them, but it's pretty close.

Check out brownbailout.com and form your own opinion on the matter. FedEx clearly cares enough about this cause to bring it to your attention (and to break from convention), but not enough to risk turning off customers in a very delicate race for power. Is that a risk you would take?