I’m a sucker for a good commercial, particularly one with a competitive edge that indicates “I’m here to win.” The United States has largely moved away from producing those kinds of ads over the past 25 years for two reasons.

First, companies realized that starting commercialized wars with peers would lead to market share and pricing bouts of oneupsmanship in which you’re left with lower margins, and as a consequence, lower profits.

In other words, large American companies have developed a fear of the counterattack.

I’ll give a hypothetical. Let’s say that Wal-Mart lowered the price of all bread and milk products by 25%, willing to take a loss on those items to get more foot traffic through the door (and as a result, they would increase profits when customers bought products beyond the loss leaders). To kick off the campaign, Wal-Mart might launch an advertising campaign that compares the … Read the rest of this article!