IBM rubbishes rivals in $200m ad campaign

The campaign, to be launched on Monday, will push the relative merits of its products and IBM has taken the stance that if that means making unfavourable comparisons with Big Blue's arch rivals then so be it.

Comparative adverts are commonplace in the US but they are rarely used in Europe.

The campaign, to promote IBM's enterprise management software, Tivoli, the messaging applications of Lotus and IBM's own database DB2 and ecommerce suite, WebSphere, is being run by international branding agency Ogilvy & Mather.

At first the campaign will be fairly generic, depicting two 'codernauts' that come to earth in search of some decent ebusiness software, but within a month IBM will turn up the temperature, until the adverts become product specific.

Lou D'Ambrosio, vice president of marketing for the software group at IBM, said: "If it makes sense to the buyer of a database and if it is important to do so, then we will provide pointed comparisons." D'Ambrosio used a specific example: "Twice the power of Oracle."

IBM will also compare Lotus to Microsoft Exchange, WebSphere to BEA WebLogic and Tivoli to CA Unicenter TNG. "We certainly have the data to do so if we choose," added D'Ambrosio.

IBM is aware that aggressive advertising may not work in the same way across all geographical regions and the campaign may be tapered to the attitudes of local customers according to the feedback from focus groups in Japan, Germany, the UK, the US and other countries. Attention to local regulation is also of "paramount" concern.

Rod Banner chairman and CEO of Banner corporation, the marketing communications subsidiary of WPP, said: "If you've got good products, tell the world. People spend a lot of money on technology and have received too much fluff for too long. Aggressive communication benefits the advertiser and the customer.

"Advertising in the technology industry is getting more aggressive, based on the need to build share in a static market, suffering from over capacity."

By Andy Favell