Okay, I promised back then that I would dig deeper about how two big Indonesian GSM providers are duking out medieval style by throwing stones at each other directly. However, due to my lack of social life, and my lack of interest about local scenes I couldn’t find out more about the advertisements. However, I can give out some examples about counter marketing using the most renowned brand in the world… Coca Cola and Pepsi Co.

In the land of uncle Sam, everything is legal, even making a mockery out of your competitor. The most oblivious of this example is the ongoing battle of Coca Cola and Pepsi Co advertisement where they literally disgrace their competitors product to a high degree. I remember about reading an advertising book where there’s a picture of a kid using Coca Cola cans as a stepping tool to reach and buy a Pepsi from a vending machine… Boy, that was classic! But you know Coca Cola going to retribute right? Well of course they did. How about Pepsi Co, did they just be quiet about it? Of course not! They retaliate again.

Now this is what counter marketing is all about. Usually, to save face, a competitor who’s being targeted as the victim will retaliate, and the evil cycle continues. In the case of Coca Cola Vs Pepsi, they can manage to duke it out for so long because they have the resource for it. One word of advice, don’t get involved in a counter marketing, because the person/group/company/principle who have the most resource will win at the end. So be very careful about derogating your competitor, because once you get stuck inside a counter marketing situation, usually it will involve a lot of money…

Money you say? Yes, money. When you derogating a competitor, it means that you deliberately dragging down its image. Now how do you increase image standing again… Well, you can’t, at least in a short period of time. But what you can do is to counter it, and make the people sees that the person who derogating you is the one who doesn’t have the credibility.