Maybe it is because of today’s economy that has resulted in desperate times for marketers, but it has become blatantly obvious that marketers of leading brands are playing “war games” with their competitors, as they fight harder to win or retain market share.  In particular, leading up to the Holiday Season, which is kicking off on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, could have been the motivator for engaging in desperate measures, negative or not.

Witness the recent Verizon ad that showed a map of the US with dots as to ATT ‘s cell phone coverage.  It showed vast empty spaces, clearly implying that ATT has limited coverage, prompting an immediate suit from ATT for false claims. Verizon shot back that “the truth hurts,” and defending its claims.   Lawyers suddenly became very busy.

These games are not new, but have been escalating in numbers unseen before and to the point of willfully misleading consumers and, more significantly, impacting sales on all sides.

Most claims are much over nothing.

For example Pantene versus Dove, has Pantene attacking Dove’s claim that its conditioner “repairs” hair better, while Science Diet versus Iams, has that company claiming that “No other dog food stacks up like Iams.”  Campbell Soup versus Progresso, had a particular damaging ad, when Campbell soup said its Harvest lines of soup are “Made with TLC,” while competitor Progresso’s soups are “Made with MSG.” And then there was Direct TV, who a few months ago had a banner straight across its ad, claiming that competitor Charter Cable’s bankruptcy, would affect its service.  Charter sued and lawyers became busier.

Interesting that it is the dueling marketers that are forcing their competitors to show proof, rather than the “watchdog,” an advertising division of the FTC, which requires by law to have a reasonable factual basis for their commercials.  But filing a complaint with the National Advertising Division, even though a cheaper route than going to court is voluntary and has no legal power.  Defending claims therefore, requires companies to delve into minutiae, as in supplying test results, providing proof for statements and seeking experts to substantiate it all.

These war games are really desperate measures, replacing well thought-out campaigns with messaging unique to the brand.

Here’s what I have to say to marketers that engage in such wars: there has to be a marketing strategy that becomes the basis for all forms of communications, be it advertising, public relations, promotions or digital marketing, one that provides the directional thought for driving a brand forward, without resorting to slamming the competition simply because of a dearth of creative and persuasive messaging, which should win the hearts and minds of consumers.  Deliberate misinformation or negative implications vis-à-vis competitors only weakens a brand at a time when social engagement, i.e., “befriending” consumers, is imperative to the success of a brand.

Here’s another thought:  attacking and suing is one way of getting publicity, albeit negative.  It’s a by-product, but I certainly hope that it is not part of any plan.

Google’s tug of war with the publishing industry plays out everyday. It’s familiar and goes like this… Google offers free search tools that allow people to find content that publishers publish, while publishers want to get paid for the content offered. It’s that simple. But once the cat is out of the bag, what’s there to do? Say no, no, you can’t read this for free anymore?

So somebody in that very smart organization figured out as to what remains attractive to readers in actually reading a newspaper offline, say over a morning cup of coffee or on a commuter ride to work. It turns out that it is not the rustling or feel of the pages as one might have thought, but rather the freedom to flip pages at will, that matters to readers.

The silliness of this boggles the mind, but apparently it is true that being able to read a paragraph or two of an article before flipping pages to read the rest of it, is what makes newspaper reading satisfying and efficient of a reader’s time.

So being a clever player, Google took this tidbit of information seriously enough to create the experimental news hub called Fast Flip in Google Labs, a visual search engine that lets readers flip through webpages of more than three dozen magazines and newspapers – of course, hosted on Google. In return for permission from publishers to show full pages, rather than short snippets, Google agrees to share advertising revenue with publishers.

Fast Flip is an outcome of what Google had considered a major problem with news sites: slow to load, and as such, potentially turn off many readers. They reasoned that browsing news on the web is slow and that when it is fast people will look at more news and more ads. Really?

The service is being initiated with the cooperation of about three dozen publishers, including major news outlets like BBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Newsweek; magazines like Cosmopolitan, The Atlantic, Esquire and Good Housekeeping; and Web-only publications like TechCrunch, Salon.com and Slate.

Ok, they may have cleverly found a way to flip pages online, but no one can seriously think that this will present a new revenue model for publishers or replace newspapers’ plunging advertising revenues. It is a pittance and a nod to the publishing industry that Google wants to stay wedged in as publishers continue to search various models under which they would charge for content. Apparently Google wants to be a player in those plans, too.

With Fast Flip, Google aimed at getting closer to the experience of scanning through physical newspapers or magazines. What they have done in fact, and with much hullabaloo, is simulated online what we already have offline.

That’s the real tug of war…

Advertisers are on the prowl again, this time around with checks in hand, to recruit Twitterers via the newly launched Sponsored Tweets, a new Twitter advertising platform that connects advertisers with Twitterers.  Now, those who tweet as a lifestyle (really most, per the headline in ClickZ, July 30, 2009, “Twitter Surpasses Facebook as Top Link in E-mail”) have the opportunity to get paid by advertisers for their tweets when tweeting about products and companies.

Well, there goes the “neighborhood,” so to speak, or the end of Twitter as we know it…

Look, getting paid for blogging about a company’s product, etc. is not new. It’s known as a “sponsored conversation,” which is a social media marketing technique in which brands provide financial or material compensation to bloggers in exchange for posting social media content about a product, service or website.  In fact I devoted a blog to the topic last June 11, titled “The FTC Steps in, Lightly” questioning the credibility of paid bloggers and noting FTC’s watchful eye hovering over it all.

And now enters the next iteration of “paid-for-opinions” online, in the pay-per-tweet platform. It somehow seems more invasive with Twitter, which originally was set up as a quick communication path for keeping up, almost hourly, with the minutest details of everyday life with friends near and far.  It even became a conduit for transmitting first hand news in real time (as in the plane that landed in the Hudson River trumping all news outlets).

This all begs the question, “how much is your Twitter soul worth?” Getting paid for tweets really sounds like a Twitter “sellout” to me…

By all accounts, I have plenty of company in that thought.  Per Mashable’s Adam Ostrow, “Personally, I think any review – on a blog or on Twitter – is immediately de-valued if the author is being paid to write it, because the objectivity is lost.” And according to an article that appeared on Mashable on the launch of Sponsored Tweets, “when you throw Twitter in the mix, there’s always the potential that your followers won’t understand that your sponsored tweet has been commissioned, even with the obligatory “hashtag” (or disclosure in the ad copy, which may, in the hurry to scan 140 characters, easily be overlooked).

Still, looking at the brighter side of things, it’s not really a bad thing for those unemployed Twitterers, and could potentially be seen as a “boost” to the hordes of still unemployed whose unemployment benefits may soon be at the brink of running out.  It could mean pocket change, a lively entrepreneurial business or a potential goldmine for Twitterers who can set their pay rate and find opportunities to tweet on behalf of advertisers, getting paid per tweet and/or click.

Interestingly enough, the cost per tweet (CPT) does not run cheap for the advertiser.  It can run between $2 and $30,000 per tweet for a 140-character message. The message goes from one Twitter account to as many people as the person has following.

Apparently there are already 200 paid Twitterers, among them celebrities who are ready and willing to be compensated for the appropriate Twitter advertising campaign.  I suspect that Sponsored Tweets will have a runaway crowd of Twitterers waiting in the wings for advertisers to beckon.

As it turns out, George Orwell’s science fiction book titled “1984” was not quite on target, as we look back 25 years later. Its futuristic predictions had a “Big Brother” watching, literally on screens everywhere, our every move in a totalitarian society that would dictate how we were allowed to live, what we could read, watch and do — basically turning us into a will-less robotic society.  Happily that’s not what happened, for unlike the Orwellian futuristic story, nobody is watching.

However, ‘They,’ whether Big Brother or other, are taking “copious notes…”

It’s well understood that a mountain of information is known about our offline lives like income, credit score, home ownership, what car we drive, etc.  It’s also well known that our every move online is traceable, through a technology known as computer “cookies” (a small text file which contains a unique ID tag, placed on your computer by a website). But now comes the news, as reported by Stefani Clifford on the front page of the New York Times, July 31, headlined “Ads Follow Web Users and get Deeply Personal,” that technology has made possible fatter and better “cookies” – ones that connect our offline information to consumers’ browsers.

Just think of a delicious wafer cookie, with a layer of cream in between two wafers.  Now add an extra layer of cream (your hereto private information or real world data) and bingo! — marketers and advertisers start salivating. In this case not at the taste, but at the opportunity to now take out the guesswork involved in online-only profiling. They can use this trove of information to show different products to people with different shopping habits, in many formats, i.e., ads, e-mail messages or semi-personalized Web pages.  Retailers that are already taking advantage of this tactic include Gap and Victoria’s Secret.

According to the article, this melding of offline information with online tracking will result in “a sea change in the way consumers encounter the Web.”

Although consumers can delete those “cookies” from their computers that allow such tracking, not many do and, according to the article, “it is easy for companies to add cookies without users noticing.”

This has an Orwellian feel to it, knowing that a lot of this is done invisibly.

In the book“1984”, it was the totalitarian government that intruded in the lives of private citizens.  It would seem that Corporate America is doing likewise, for nobody gave anyone permission to use the offline information to further typecast us as to our wants, dislikes and behavioral patterns.

To be fair, I suppose that there are benefits to this all around, not just for advertisers, marketers and companies showcasing products.  Even some consumers will be pleased to have their “wants” “come to them” based on their online profile, rather than go hunting themselves.

But what — are we going to make George Orwell right in becoming a will less society in which others do the choosing for us, those who now know what we think and want?  Do we want to be so predictable?  What about randomness? What about individuality?

In recent times there has been much discussion about online privacy issues.  I say this raises the bar on privacy concerns all around…

It was not the Super Bowl ads that mattered so much to the brands that paid an obscene amount of money to have their ads aired on the biggest Advertising Sunday of the year…  It’s what happened afterwards, or as in Denny’s free breakfast for America, what happened the “morning after.”

What pushed the staying power of the Super Bowl ads this year was the intensive twittering effect.  You would think that all the tweeting would have happened between football and advertising fans.  But no, the biggest “chatter” emerged from the brands themselves, according to AdFreak.com, brand managers who worked the twittering from the vantage point of a well-planned marketing campaign.

So much for spontaneous twittering…

Anyway, none of the ads this year got the five stars from Fanfest (or, for that matter from any other reviewers) that would propel them into national stardom vis-à-vis consumers and resonate with them for any length of time.  Maybe nothing can.  Maybe we’ve seen it all…

But there are those of us who do remember this year’s 25th anniversary of the introduction of Apple’s Macintosh in 1984, the one that came out with a foreboding futuristic theme that brought out both wonder and astonished terror in the viewers.

That had staying power, beyond a twittering effect and well past any “morning after” sales gimmick.  It had staying power because it broke through all creative boundaries ever tried before.  And as The NY Times wrote in today’s edition,  “people still talk about it” 25 years later.

Oh well, as a diehard optimist, there’s always next year….