Advertising Techniques - Being Disparaging About Other People

[joko]

I was looking at a dreadfully amateur looking website earlier and aside form that, i noticed the person seemed to spend a lot of time comparing herself to other people in the same job, and basically going on and on about how much better she is, how she is faster than most others, how she charges less than other less talented people, how she is more fun than other grumpy people, how she is cleaner that almost all others she knows etc etc etc

aside from the fact that her work was good but average (certainly nothing special) - her constant attempts to put others down - as though she is the only one to has any sort of ability or professionalism - would have put me off hiring her, rather than make me want to hire her.
i imagine her to be kind of bitter, with a bit of an attitude - rather than actually believing what she has written.

this woman is in the US so i will never meet her or hire her - i was just looking - but it struck that others use this 'technique' too - and i cant see that it would work?

do you think people are fooled and comforted by her claims?
or do they, like me, feel it makes her seem unprofessional?

is this something your company does? does it work?

thanks

[bednobs]

politicians do it all the time!

[dizmouk2009]

joko: I suppose it would be down to the person reading her 'advertisement'. It didn't reel you in but it must be working on some people as she wouldn't be 'successful'. Personally I would probably not hire her either as I'd make the same assumption of her (albeit wrong I feel to do so but in the end it is my money I'd be spending). I don't believe it is right to bring other people/companies down. It's a different kettle of fish but when working at a Social Club I used to tell people off for saying "This place is better than The Fox Inn". Allow other people to make up their own mind I say - don't go bigging yourself up because like you said her work is average.

[sue11]

In the US they do this all the time, if you watch tv adverts they are always claiming how much better they are than their competitors!
I guess if people are used to seeing this over there it will probably not strike them as anything unusual, but I agree it is very unprofessional.
Our company would never do anything like this, but I don't think as a rule you see it a lot in the UK.
Also I guess that if you attempted to do this in the UK, you are setting yourself up as a target to be attacked by your competitors, who may have more money to retaliate with a bigger campaign than yours!

[atalanta]

Professionally speaking, this is called "knocking copy" and is frowned upon. People who do this immediately come over as not professional, and do themselves more harm than they do to others.