They do the same with the ads against Google, too. They compare themselves in some areas where they can win, and of course disregard all the other areas where they lose. Or worse, they accuse Google of something themselves are doing.
It was pretty much the whole strategy for the "Windows Phone 8 Challenges", too, for which they picked tests where only WP8 can win, and even when they lost they tried to work around acknowledging a win for the Android or iPhone owner.
> They compare themselves in some areas where they can win, and of course disregard all the other areas where they lose.
Aren't you describing how marketing has worked since the dawn of time? I'm genuinely curious why this is worthy of discussion except as an example of how companies commonly market their product.
It seems preposterous to me to expect that companies would willfully enumerate aspects of their product that are weaker than the competition.
I would like to seem a fact supporting this, I have never been to a country where comparing objects in ads was outlawed, but to be honest I have spent most of my life in the US and travled only to Western Europe.
Spain is one of them. I cannot quote the law but simple experience shows it.
Edit: there is some EU law about it [1] (it was bound to be...).
In the end, as you can only compare 'objetively', you will never do it (because your advert will become boring, mostly). So jokes like Microsoft does about Google are outlawed.
Here, in France, it has been outlawed forever until it was finally authorized in the early 90s. As a then advertising student I can remember there was quite a fuss about it. In reality, comparative advertising is restrained by relatively clear rules and very rare in the wild. The few occurrences of side-by-side products I seem to remember actually involve large US-based international companies.
Usually, the comparison part is limited to a features table.
When I visited the USA I was surprised to see comparative advertising on TV. That was something I haven't seen here (Australia).
An example would be fast food ad's - they would show their burger side by side with a competitors comparing the size and cost etc. Nothing like that in Australia.
Update: Wikipedia says "In Australia, no specific law governs comparative advertising"
I am Australian. Remember those Energizer bunny commercials showing the other bunny running out of battery halfway through the race? And a quick google shows that Duracell ran a direct campaign against Eveready which was ruled ok by the courts, as well as a recent court decision in favour of Optus doing direct comparisons with Telstra for mobile phone plans.
To be clear, I do not believe the parent post who said 'this is not allowed in most countries'. I would be less surprised by a claim that this kind of advertising is uncommon in most countries.
Even in india, I hadn't seen the kind of comparative advertising which is commonplace on American TV. Very rarely, some products would compare themselves against "the leading detergent" or somesuch.
Their #scroogled campaign tweets were primarily fueled by the contest to win $500 prepaid Visa card - so they were essentially paying people to bash Google. Nobody noticed.
It was pretty much the whole strategy for the "Windows Phone 8 Challenges", too, for which they picked tests where only WP8 can win, and even when they lost they tried to work around acknowledging a win for the Android or iPhone owner.