Strawman Product: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
Are you worried that people won't think your product is the greatest thing since sliced bread? Do you feel that your product won't sell if people think a rival product is good enough, especially if it's the leading brand? Then you should try the all new miracle advertising method of the
Take flaws that most people find mere annoyances, or outright make flaws up, and crank them up to [[So Bad
These are some of the exciting uses for this method:
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So call now, and get the hottest trend in bullshi... we mean ''marketing'', today!.
Strawman Product [
Compare [[Scapegoat Ad]] and [[Spokes Sue]].
Contrast [[Our Product Sucks]].
{{examples
* "I'm a Mac." "And I'm a PC."
** This advertising campaign is the embodiment of this trope. It doesn't just slightly fit it. It's as outrageous and blatant as the above description.
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** They always claim that "any PC" will have "a bunch of viruses and headaches" and that Macs have none.
*** Even harder in the UK where PC and Mac are played by [[David Mitchell]] and Robert Webb, respectively. Casting [[David Mitchell]] as the PC may have been a mistake, as he generally plays the nicer, more relatable characters while Webb plays arrogant jerks.
** If you think these are bad, you probably haven't seen [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8 the first Macintosh ad], portraying themselves as a heroically hot [[Action Girl]], their opponents as a totalitarian state ''specifically'' modeled after [[Nineteen Eighty
* The way Pepsi ads portrayed Coke in the '80s and '90s.
* [[
** Sega ''was'' this trope back in the days. More than half their ads were just bashing their rival company (usually Nintendo) in 'creative' ways. We all know the 'Genesis does what Nintendon't' one, which chastised the NES for being 8 bits lower than the Genesis. When the SNES came out, they found the only thing they could say was better about the Genesis was its slightly lower price, so they included a kid screaming at this 'higher price' in fear. Even though they were only about $50 (one game) apart?
** Don't forget ... the Genesis's DMA controller had '''[[Blatant Lies|BLAST PROCESSING]]'''.
** There was also the [[Game Gear]] versus the [[Game Boy]]. Fans didn't bite.
** On a side note, as the [[The Angry Video Game Nerd
* MCI ran some really nasty anti-AT&T ads in the early '80s.
* ''[[Mad Magazine]]'' parodied the rivalry between car rental companies Avis and Hertz in [[The Seventies]] with a "war" of insulting ads between the two. The punchline was that the companies have actually staged the rivalry to monopolize people's attention, and having done so they proceed to merge and move on to crushing all the smaller car rental companies. In [[The Eighties]], they recycled the premise and punchline to poke fun at the Coke-Pepsi rivalry.
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** One of the best of the Quiznos vs. Subway commercials would be the one where the "randomly selected test subject" is asked which sandwich he prefers, the Quiznos sandwich, or the Subway sandwich. The test subject chooses the Subway sandwich, primarily because in addition to cold cuts and cheese, the bread has been stuffed with "extra lettuce" - i.e., hundred dollar bills.
** A lot of the Quiznos ads also bragged about how their sandwiches were so much bigger than Subway's. Subway's response? Turn the attack against Quiznos by pointing out that their smaller sandwiches are healthier. This would not be the last time that Subway used "healthier food" as a selling point. Isn't that right, Jared?
*** Subway constantly treats "fast food" as a
*** Subway also likes to poke fun at the traditional "assembly line" strategy that most fast-food restaurants use, with the idea that "special orders" are not allowed. This is despite the fact that most fast-food restaurants do special orders and some do not even make the food until the transaction is complete.
* Alltel commercials have the Sales Guys who are straw spokesmen for Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint. If you were expecting the straw Verizon guy trashtalking the Alltel guy when Verizon bought Alltel, you were in for a disappointment: The real Verizon guy and Chad finally met and the Sales Guys were nowhere to be seen.
* Bing.com represents its competitors using [[Uncanny Valley|humans who communicate like search engines]]. [[Analogy Backfire|This implies that their product is]] [[
** Also crosses over with [[Cannot Operate a Blanket]]; even the most novice Google user can get more relevant results than the search-engine-humans provide.
* In infomercials for a type of pot with strainer lid attachment, the Luddites using the old standby of separate pot and strainer would be seen practically hurling all the components towards the sink in the apparent hope that they would magically combine into strained pasta. They would then proceed to look surprised and dismayed at the unavoidable mess their stone age cooking technology has caused.
* Every [[Cable
* You cannot legally do that in several European countries; so when an ad comes out doing exactly that you know that the two "rival" companies are actually owned by the same stock board. Additional irony if they're the only two choices you have.
** Instead, the marketing resorts to "standard products" or "other products". In one comedy sketch, the CEO of the firm "Standard Products" was complaining about how everybody else picks on them.
* Parodied in an episode of ''[[Mr. Show]]'', where a national chain of supermarkets runs an increasingly slanderous series of ads against their mom-and-pop competitor. Among their boasts is that at their store, unlike at ''certain other stores'', you'll always find apples, rats don't crawl all over the food, and your children will ''not'' be kidnapped by a white slavery ring.
* [http://www.cracked.com/article_15768_as-seen-on-tv-10-most-laughably-misleading-ads.html This] cracked article.
* One particularly bad anti-DSL ad (placed by Buckeye Cablesystem) talked about how dangerous DSL phone line service was. The revelation the the "free" dsl modem actually cost $49 before rebate wasn't so bad. The next part, in which the advertiser vastly overstates the issue of placing a filter on every phone jack (the phone company provided 8 filters, more than adequate) was worse, especially the part where they said "and your home security system may not work without one" complete with rapid camera movement and eerie sound warbling. The end of the ad really took the cake, in which the announcer threw up his hands in dismay as he went through the installations steps, which he listed (insert filter into phone jack, run dsl cable from phone jack to modem, connect modem to computer, install software) then stalked off, infuriated, after the "install software" part, which was the last step.
* Listerine, way back before it became known, had a significant problem: its primary use, mouthwash, wasn't saleable. The solution was an ad campaign designed to make halitosis (aka bad breath) into a much bigger problem than it had conventionally been, and therefore sell more mouthwash. It worked.
* In Australia at least, Energizer advertises its batteries as lasting three times as long as Duracell's; Duracell advertises ''its'' batteries as lasting three times as long as Energizer's. While one would think this would require either [[Blatant Lies]] or infinite-capacity batteries and the destruction of the Universe, it turns out they're both [[From a Certain Point of View|comparing their own long-life batteries to the competition's high-power-but-short-life batteries]].
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* For a while, Total was fond of counting how many extra bowls of other cereals one would need to eat for the same amount of nutrition.
* Parodied on ''[[The Simpsons]]''; the family visits EPCOT and goes on an educational ride about electric cars, sponsored by "the oil companies of America". The ride, which moves slow and jerkily, proclaims that as an electric car it's slow, can't go very far, and that if you drive it everyone will think you're gay.
* Products like Stove-Top Stuffing and Rice-a-Roni seem to have an odd aversion to potatos. Their advertizing campaigns usually focusing on how they're an alternative to potatoes (never on which is healthier or easier to prepare), assuming that potatoes are either boring or the only popular side dish. Or both, which makes little sense.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Advertising Tropes]]
[[Category:The War On Straw]]
[[Category:Strawman Product]]
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