Diss and That

A few years ago,  some sports shows tried to get involved in social media by scrolling viewers' tweets across the bottom of the screen. I assume that idea came about because some exec threw together some buzzwords, but it was also an idea with potential.  You could get people discussing issues,  feeling involved, giving feedback.

Instead, it was mostly fans of different teams trading insults, which I assume is why they don't have the audience participation scrolls anymore. Or maybe they realized that it makes no sense to have TV shows catering to people who have moved on to other media.

But what got me was how baseless and generic the insults were. You'd expect them to be based on actual events on the sports field, with team success giving an advantage to some fans. Say, the Leaf fans take a low profile, while the then-successful Habs remind everyone who's winning. But no, they just threw one unoriginal insult after another at the other side. It was the linguistic equivalent of the Calvin peeing truck window decals.

Speaking of which, I see the same phenomena around vehicles, with Ford and Chevy fans going after each other. Again. you'd think an entire car company would offer ample ammunition to anyone looking to insult the other side. How do you Chevy folk see out them little side windows on the new Camaro? It's bad enough our manufacturing jobs are going to Mexico, did you have to name a car "Fiesta" too?

Heck, even if they can't come up with material themselves, the Chevy commercials I've belaboured in the past give plenty of cues. And yet, the insults are just playground taunts so meaningless that you could reverse the names and they'd make just as much sense.

What’s really strange is that Ford vs. Chevy is far from their biggest battle.  They’re in a fight for their lives against the imports, and they’re both fighting poor perception of American cars.  If the auto industry were a superhero franchise, we’d be in the movie where the Good Guys and Bad Guys have to band together to fight some greater threat.  In other words, these competitors have more similarities than differences.

But maybe it’s that sameness that causes the rivalry.  They say that the businesses in which branding is most important are the ones where the competitors are essentially the same. So these insults are no different from ad campaigns selling you soap.