Is Wal-Mart doing an advertising no-no?

[mleach]

Many companies have directly targetted their competition (real or imagined) in adverts for a bunch of decades now.

One of the best examples I can remember were the Brillo vs. S.O.S. soap pad commercials from the late 70's/early 80's.  They really took each other to task but the joke was on us because they were owned by the same company.  So no matter which one you decided to buy, the company won either way.  Brilliant!

Back inthe mid 80's I can remember when Washington DC had three CHR FM radio stations. Everyone in the region can remember WAVA and then WRQX Q107 ( now Mix 107.3 ) but few remember the third one..B106 ( now WJFK ).  What made B106 different was their TV ads attacking WAVA and Q107 by name saying how they (B106) played more music per hour than WAVA and Q107 and how B106 had the better jocks. As I can recall many people felt those attack ads were in poor taste simply by naming the comeptition. In the end B106 lasted only a few years ( two..three at the most ) and is pretty much forgotten today while WAVA and Q107 even though both have long since had got out of the CHR game those stations are still fondly remembered to this day. On a similar note, when Cincinatti's WSAI-AM did their "Real Oldies", didn't they had recevied some complaints because of their on air promos slamming the other Cincinatti oldies station at the time that being WGRR-FM?

I guess what works on a national level, the act of going after your competition by name isn't quite all that accepted on a LOCAL level. At least it wasn't in Washington DC and from what I read, it wasn't in Cincinatti either.

Oh course the exception to the rule I would imagine would be those politcal ads.

[Nate Wesley]

Pizza hut is on its way out the door. The new name will be "The Hut"...Gawd I hope this does NOT mean they will go head on and tackle Subway by adding subs to the menu!!!!

I thought I was the only one who noticed that logo.  That would be one gigantic risk if they actually go through with it.  Everyone knows what Pizza Hut is and represents.  What is 'The Hut'?  That's almost 50 years of name recognition down the drain, potentially--hopefully its just a nickname or something like that. 

[Nate Wesley]

I was always told the idea was not to acknowledge your competition if you were LEADING the pack.

If K-Mart has improved, great. But the last I heard they were struggling to compete with Wal-Mart. Why, then, would Wal-Mart give them the time of day?

This was the thinking I had in mind when I posed my question.  Who knows, maybe this an outdated way to do things--but I still haven't seen Coca-Cola ever make mention of Pepsi (but plenty of vice-versa).