In the early eighties I worked on a brand which - whenever we advertised - consistently saw sales rise by 75% almost overnight. This convinced me that marketing messages can and do break through, and impact significantly upon behaviour. This week we've seen a similar example, as the media - perhaps bored of causing runs on banks - have amused themselves by causing panic at the pumps, by mentioning the prospect of... panic at the pumps. No surprise, really - it's how we get kids to eat their greens ("Don't you dare eat that spinach") - and, if I recall correctly, explained by the NLP theory of the embedded command. Just touch that subconscious hair-trigger with the right (or wrong) word, and you'll have your customer worrying about how your product's going to kill them, instead of calmly buying it. Ogilvy cited a claim that 'Our salt contains no arsenic' as a good (bad) example of sending out an inappropriate message. I find it curious that Sainsbury advertise at the shelf-edge products that they sell at the same price as Tesco. While I understand the logic - and I've gone into print myself in the past to say they needed to do something about their expensive image - at an emotional level I reckon this particular tactic is a bit of an own goal. Certainly I find myself thinking things like 'Is that the best they can do versus Tesco?' (achieve the same price) or 'Oh, Tesco stock this, too' (a store I also shop at occasionally). It seems to raise more questions than it answers, and gets the word Tesco going round in my head, without any negative connotations (which surely is the objective of comparative advertising?).