The Power of Competition: A Pragmatic Critical Discourse Analysis of Selected Competitive Digital Advertisements

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Competitive ads try to exercise social power over both the original ad consumers and the competitor’s consumers. According to Fairclough’s (1989) concept of consumerism, by building a relationship with the competitor consumers, a new ideology in ads could be displayed away from just fulfilling the consumer’s needs. Consequently, competitive advertisements are not only selling a product but are also trying to engage different types of consumers. Such engagement can build both social power and a high standard position for the advertised brand in the market. The present study aims to conduct a critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine two competitive digital ads in an attempt to explore how these types of ads exercise social power and decode their social ideology. The two selected advertisements, which were posted on the social media platforms on Halloween, belong to the Western brands Pepsi and BMW. To conduct the CDA, the study employs Grice’s (1975) cooperative principle, presupposition, and opposition (Jeffries, 2010), through which the social power and ideology are represented. The study concludes that competitive advertisements resort to comparative, humorous, persuasive, and ironic notions on social events in order to acquire and build relationships with consumers on both sides. It is also found that the attempt of increasing engagement with consumers sheds light on the social power of the discourse of competitive advertisements.

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