"Achilles' Heel" and "King of the Hill” Advertising

This article is based on an interview with Allan Kay by Guy Kawazaki .
Allan Kay is the founder of Korey, Kay & Partners, a $75-million advertising
agency in New York City.

Kay believes that there are 2 kinds of advertising methods when you are going head-to-head with competitors: "Achilles' Heel" and "King of the Hill”.

Achilles’ Heel:
In Achilles’ Heel advertising, you find out the competitor's weakness, and you combat it with your strengths.
Kay gives example of Achilles’ Heel advertising method his agency has used to develop a campaign for Wise Potato Chips.
In 1970s, P&G had come out with a new product: Pringles. Allan Kay and his guys studied the packaging of the new P&G chips, and they got all they needed in order to compete with Pringles. The Package read like a chemistry set—with things like mono- and diglycerides and butylated hydroxyanisole—to preserve freshness of all things!
Kay then looked at Wise Potato Chips pack and their ingredients were potatoes, vegetable oil, and salt.
So they created a very simple commercial: two women sitting side by side. In front of one woman was a can of Pringles and in front of the other woman was a bag of Wise potato chips. The woman with the Pringles picks up the can and reads the long list of chemical ingredients. Then the other woman picks up the Wise package and reads, "Wise potato chips contains potatoes, vegetable oil, and salt." Then they cut to Pringles and the announcer says, "The newfangled potato chip." They cut to Wise and he says, "Or Wise, the oldfangled potato chip. You decide."


King of the Hill:
In King of the Hill advertising you find out the competitor's strength and present yourself as being stronger at it.
A sample campaign is the one Kay and his associates did for Virgin against British Airways.
British Airways was the gold standard in San Francisco. Kay's agency wanted to tell people as much as they could about Virgin Atlantic Airways in as short a period of time. Virgin was a relatively unknown quantity in San Francisco.
People knew British Airways had good-quality products; so did Virgin. They knew British Airways had regular flights and big airplanes; so did Virgin. Therefore, if they could quickly put themselves on the same pedestal as British Air, they would get considered.
So the advertising started with a teaser that appeared on billboards and on television with the phrase "Yoooooo-hoooooo, British Aiiiiirrrrwayyys," which signaled, Uh-oh, somebody's coming to compete with British Airways. It was the shortcut to the top of the mountain. The customer knew that there was going to be someone new in town. They had a frame of reference even before they knew the name of the product.

So how to develop strong campaigns?

Kay gives us great advice on developing campaigns against our competition. He says: "You have to know yourself and your competition equally well, and you have to know the customer—we always say start with the customer.
We have five basic guidelines for developing advertising: Start with the customer. Live with the client. Uncover the obvious. Keep it simple. And follow through.
If you do each of these five things, you're going to come pretty damn close to the target. I always believe the problem will dictate the solution if you really understand the problem and set your objective."