[zecho]

If negative marketing didn't work, we wouldn't have negative campaigning. The point of it isn't to boost your brand so much as it is to suppress your opponent's.

However, it alienates the undecided. Mudslinging works best when targeted to base voter blocs. We rarely see it in product advertising, though, because of this fear of alienation. It takes a very well-put-together campaign to attack your competition without giving them too much exposure. The last effective one in recent memory is probably Mac vs. PC, and that focused on targeting the frustrations of current PC users. Often you see it set up in that David vs. Goliath light, which is what I think Freshdesk is trying to do here.

This however, isn't marketing. Or, at least, didn't start that way. It started with what you said: pointless personal bickering. There's no reason for it and Zendesk should probably have never have brought up Freshdesk in the first place, negative comments or not. Freshdesk took it as an opportunity to do a compare/contrast while people were paying attention. I'm guessing it has zero effect on sales in the long run, though.

(Personally, I'm now even more glad with our choice of using Assistly.)