Commercials for common household products will sometimes have a demonstration of the advertised product's effectiveness compared to another leading brand—either Brand X or an actual competitor.
The demonstration is usually done by showing both brands being used side by side, with the ad's brand being far more effective, lasting longer, doing more, etc.
In the US they can and will mention the competing brand by name. In Canada, the UK and Australia this is not allowed, so the other brand is usually referred to just as another leading brand.
- Dish detergents often do this, with stacks of dishes, grease-cutting power of a single drop, scratched glass, etc.
- Laundry detergents demonstrate the amount of clothing they will clean, or will show a bright white shirt next to a dingy Brand X-washed one.
- Battery ads will do this comparing how long they last.
- Common with absorbent products such as paper towels, diapers, tampons, and women's pads.
- Also common in infomercials, where one host demonstrates the Great New Product and the other demonstrates the Old Way...and is either throwing the contest by ridiculously over-selling its flaws or is Too Incompetent to Operate a Blanket.
In Germany, it is actually illegal to say anything disparaging about a competitor's product, even if your statement is true. So, if your product is healthy and you know your competitor's product has additives that cause cancer, it's against the law to say this in an advertisement in Germany!
In France, it used to be illegal. Not anymore, but you can only do this if you have studies with numbers backing your claim.
In Chile, comparisons to specific competitor brands are legal, but ads limit themselves to "another leading brand". This is because explicitly mentioning/disparaging the competitor is considered by the local publicist association to be a serious breach of professional ethics; in the very few times this has happened, there have been harsh repercussions.
When things are being shown absorbing liquid, especially diapers, tampons, and pads, the liquid will be blue. Understandable, given that it's highly visible and no bodily fluids are blue—red, yellow, or brown liquids seem fairly disgusting.
When the comparison is only implied, it might be a case of Product Switcheroo Ad (demonstrating that a cheap product is so high-quality that it could pass for its pricier counterparts). Might overlap with Rigged Contest (they rig the contest so the person using the advertised product wins easily) and Deceptively Simple Demonstration (the product performs greatly at a task too simple).
Sub-Trope of Strawman Product (mudslinging a competitor's product to uplift the one being advertised). Compare Too Incompetent to Operate a Blanket for those side-by-side demonstrations where one side is performed in an obviously ridiculous fashion.
Examples:
- Raid Insecticide Campaign: In some ads, the homeowner first tries to kill the bugs with a blank spray insecticide. It doesn't even make the pests sneeze. Then, the same sequence is repeated with a Raid can, which easily erases the vermin from existence.
- The Metamucil fiber supplement demonstrates how easily it dissolves in water compared to its competitors.
- Tylenol soft chews are cut in half next to a pill of the common, hard kind.
- Pampers diapers, Tampax tampons, and Always pads (which have a "lock-away core") are shown absorbing more blue liquid than some non-descript brand.
- A finger with a drop of Dawn dish detergent is shown being dipped into pans filled with greasy water. The grease immediately springs away from where the finger touched the water. Dawn always gets more pans than the competition.
- Duracell had a well-known commercial in which a fleet of "battery-powered" toy rabbits with snare drums using the "leading brand" would run down, while only the rabbit containing a Duracell battery kept marching. Turnabout being fair play, Energizer reproduced the commercial, with a voiceover explaining that this result was only because their brand hadn't been invited to the competition—at which point a larger and much flashier toy rabbit with a bass drum marched across the screen. The Energizer Bunny would go on to become a Mascot, starring in a number of Commercial Switcheroo bits. note
- In an ad for a Swedish telephone company, the company's logo is featured on a greyhound, while the logos of other companies are featured on "slower" dogs. In later ads, the logos of the other companies are blurred out.
- One advertisement for the Amstrad CPC was intended to show how much easier it was to set up than other home computers of the time. The other computer shown is shown from such an angle that the maker's name isn't visible, but its grey case suggests it's a ZX Spectrum +2 — which Amstrad also sold. Spectrums were technically inferior, but a lot cheaper (under £100 new, which is noteworthy even now and really something back in the 1980s) and much more popular. As long as there were Spectrums, Amstrad had trouble selling more advanced lines.
- Parodied with a Sprite commercial, which compared the cleaning power of Sprite against some random brand-name detergent by placing dirty cloths in a bowl. After several simulated minutes, the cleaning detergent won the contest. The demonstrator then drank the bottle of Sprite before drinking from the bowl used for the still-dirty shirt.
- A UK advert for Fairy dish detergent had a long picnic table with place settings representing all the dishes washed by a bottle of "the leading washing up liquid", and then a much longer table, which of course represented Fairy.
- Parodied with an advert for Ocean Spray cranberry juice, which demonstrates that a swimming pool lane filled with cranberries is easier to swim through than one filled with pineapples.
Voiceover: I don't know what that proves, but it definitely proves it 100%!
- In a 1986 commercial
by the Filipino fast food chain Jollibee, a taste test is conducted between two burgers labelled "Brand X" and "Brand Y". Brand X is a bland, dry burger, while Brand Y is a Jollibee Yumburger.
- Folger's Crystals coffee brand's old magazine ads out together two coffee pots with filled mugs on top. One was for some unspecified leading brand, while the second was for Folger's. The latter is shown considerably darker and, therefore, of higher quality and richer taste than the other.
- Kimberly-Clark's ads for menstruation tampons frequently depict either a bare panty vs. one covered by their tampons or two different brands of tampons being soaked with blue liquid. Their tampons, of course, are always shown as being the ones that absorb the greater volume, while leaving little to no substance to soil the panty underneath.
- Harpic toilet cleaner faces off Toilet Duck (a.k.a. Pato Purific) in a Scapegoat Ad against its mascot. Predictably, the former's toilet looks spotless while the Cuac bottle produces a rather vomitive, half-cleaned toilet.
- In Hyundai's 2012 Super Bowl ad, a cheetah races their new Veloster Turbo. Of course, since it's advertising Hyundai's car, the cheetah loses... but gets its revenge by attacking its trainer.
- State Farm earlier commercials have them claim that their rival company's coverage was of lesser quality by putting two people making a phone call. The one using their rival's services gets a lot of static after a while.
- So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish: A one-shot character's dog had a brief and inglorious career in dog food commercials because it failed to remember it wasn't supposed to eat the "other leading brands" on offer, even though the crew had taken the precaution of pouring engine oil over them.
- The Benny Hill Show: A parody commercial for laundry detergent has two shirts stained with blackcurrant juice, one washed with a competitor's product and the other washed with the advertised brand. The results: "Not a whole lot of a difference", with both shirts still stained by the juice.
- Monty Python's Flying Circus: Parodied many times with the American Defense/Crelm Toothpaste/Shrill Petrol sequence of cartoons ("The not-white car represents another toothpaste"), and Whizzo Butter, which 9 out of 10 British housewives can't distinguish from a dead crab when the two are placed side-by-side.
- Bob & Ray: During a pad infomercial with a floor wax sponsor that asked them to urge customers to make a side-by-side test on their own floors, Bob once inquired mid-commercial, "Uh...if we're so sure they'll think [sponsor's wax] is better, why should they bother doing the test?"—much to the manufacturer's likely chagrin.
- Snopes: The "How to Tell the Difference Between Organic and GMO Eggs" article shows a photo of hardboiled "organic" and "GMO" eggs side by side. The "organic" egg has a golden yolk, while the "GMO" egg has a grey-green yolk. The claim was declared false partly because GMO eggs don't really exist, and partly because differences in colour were because the eggs had been cooked differently. The "organic" egg had been properly cooked while the "GMO" egg had been overcooked (in any overcooked egg a grey-green iron sulphide ring forms around the yolk and causes discolouration).
- The Ren & Stimpy Show: In "Stimpy's Big Day", Stimpy hosts one such commercial for Gritty Kitty kitty litter, and has Mr. Horse test it against the competing brand.
