As an answer to MSNBC's new vacuous "Lean Forward" promo campaign, Fox News Channel has worked up a few promos of its own to knock the lower-rated rival network.
"In this country, we don't stand still, we don't lean, we move forward," goes the tag line for one. Another promo spot declares, "We don’t stand around, we don’t lean against a wall, we break the wall down. We move… Forward."
Fox's move is a "study in pointlessness," media and advertising blogger Catharine P. Taylor groused today at Bnet.com, the website for the CBS business interactive network:
The new Fox News ad campaign “Move Forward” may be that rare occasion where there’s no solid business reason to advertise in the face of a campaign from a competitor. A riff on MSNBC’s recently-launched “Lean Forward” campaign, it’s completely pointless. We’re not to believe, are we, that in these polarized times an MSNBC viewer seeing this campaign would actually switch to Fox News? (The ads themselves are below.)
Of course not. So what is the point? To engage in a corporate pissing match, just because you’re Fox News and you can. The fact is there is no real competition between Fox News and MSNBC.
[...]
[C]ould you say the same thing about MSNBC’s campaign? Is it pointless? Not really. Even though it’s been known as the liberal antidote to Fox News for a few years now, the network needed to fully claim its territory, which it does with the new campaign. Fox News, with this campaign, is just showing off.
