When it pays to engage in a brand rivalry—and when it doesn’t

Heated rivalries are everywhere, and not just between fictional hockey players.

There is no shortage of noted brand duels in American culture. Some, like Apple and Microsoft, Nike and Adidas, or Coke and Pepsi, have been going on for decades, while others, like Uber and Lyft or Poppi and Olipop, are newer to the game.

Recently, fast-food brands were quick to engage in a game of us-versus-them when McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski posted a video to LinkedIn of himself taking a not-so-big and now much-memed bite of the brand’s new Big Arch burger. Competitors Burger King and Wendy’s were quick to respond with their own executive taste-test videos, creating a viral burger-wars moment that ultimately led to a boost in visibility for McDonald’s and its rivals.

“It’s all a win,” Mike Ford, CEO of audience management platform Skydeo, told us. “No one was talking about McDonald’s or the Big Arch before this.”

After the viral moment, McDonald’s reported a sales boost for the Big Arch, and for Burger King, the buzz around its brand and president led into the release of a new brutally honest campaign as part of a bigger effort to establish a new tone of voice, CMO Joel Yashinsky told us.

“I think that plays a factor in terms of whether you get engaged with and battle it out with your competitors in a social and public fashion,” Yashinsky said. “We want to be seen as a brand that’s fun.”

While a little competition can be mutually beneficial, it can also come with risks. We spoke with experts about when and how to engage in brand rivalries without tarnishing reputations—or giving too much attention to the other side.

All’s fair in (brand) love and war

For Burger King, timing was a key component of its burger-eating response video. After seeing the video of Kempczinski, Yashinsky said the brand’s marketing team quickly pulled together recently filmed footage of its president, Tom Curtis, taking an enormous bite of a burger to present an almost immediate counterpoint. So far, Yashinksky said the brand has seen positive results, particularly around Curtis’s image.

In the attention economy, rivalries serve to divert the spotlight from one brand to another, Ford said, but responses often require timeliness and relevance to have the intended effect. In the case of Burger King, it seems to be working: According to data from PeakMetrics cited by Axios, the brand appeared in 68% of online conversations about the McDonald’s video as of mid-March.

“These things have a shelf life,” he said. “If [Burger King] were doing it a week later, they [would have] missed the boat.”

Ideally, brand rivalries inspire customers to pick a side and support a brand in a show of loyalty, which Ford said can benefit everyone.

“When it’s a David versus Goliath, it’s beneficial for David and potentially Goliath, too,” Ford said. “The more topline awareness, the more sales you can generate.”

Playing the long game

In the event of a rivalry, though, there’s perhaps no bigger risk than accidentally giving a competitor a leg up. Last month, Pepsi spent millions on a Super Bowl ad that starred polar bears, which have been associated with the Coca-Cola brand for decades, and Chuck Byers, marketing professor at Santa Clara University, argued that the choice could have left consumers with the wrong takeaway. When people think back on this year’s Super Bowl, he said, it’s possible that some will remember Coca-Cola bears more than they’ll remember the message of the ad, which emphasized Pepsi’s superior taste.

“Why on God’s green earth do you want to spend $20 million on two Super Bowl spots and make your competitor’s iconography the star of your spend?” he said. “Coke didn’t have any ads. You literally gave your competitor a spot.”

While it’s not uncommon for brands like Pepsi or Wendy’s to take shots at the leaders in their market categories, Byers and Ford told us they would not advise leading brands like Coca-Cola or McDonald’s to take a swing at smaller competitors.

“When you are No. 1, you don’t even acknowledge that competitors exist,” Byers said. “And you sure as heck don’t give them space on your billboards.”

For market leaders, Ford agreed that it’s often best to “keep it above board” and avoid acknowledging the other brands taking shots. The CEO videos, he said, worked “because McDonald’s is the big dog in the room, and everybody else is still chipping away at their market share.”

Brand experts recommended against saying anything that could appear petty and focusing on winning attributes; Byers pointed to Ford and Chevrolet, which often try to show one another up in terms of automotive awards won. In the age of rapid social media responses, it can still happen: During last year’s Super Bowl, prebiotic-soda brand Olipop received some side-eyes when it jumped into the comment sections of videos that criticized a vending-machine stunt from rival brand Poppi.

“I do not think you help your brand profile by getting into spats,” Byers said. “If you’re going to roll with the pigs, you’re going to get dirty.”