Alex Woodruff Biz Buzz

Watch carefully
It’s bad enough copying competitors’ products and selling a me-too. But when your advertising starts looking like the competition’s, you’ve really not done your homework.
Banking is a low-involvement sector to lots of consumers, as with many everyday services, especially when they don’t want to pay for it. So I wasn’t exactly looking for this [...]

Like many of its counterparts, ASDA, a major UK supermarket chain decided, that it was time to copy the leading brand in a key sector of the snacking market, and launch a me-too product under its own label.

The victim: Penguin. A United Biscuits brand and household name to most Brits, who like all seagoing nations [...]

Leading maker of biscuits in Australia, Arnotts, dominates many product sectors. Their TimTam brand is a household name. Yummy chocolate layers, yummy cream chocolate filling, yummy chocolate covering.

Enter Dick Smith, the local hero Down Under and a keen opportunity spotter. Dick is a champion of me-too products and the curse of many a [...]

Compared to ‘me-toos‘ I would say this a blatant example of “passing-off”. This is where rather than copy, you actually pretend to be the original.

The brand owners of Pringles, global cruncher Procter and Gamble, are probably doing their level best to shoot this upstart out of the water, but lurking somewhere in a backwater [...]

Me too products are - like kids in a playground calling out to Mummy - nothing but companies copying the ideas of others.
Let’s not get this wrong - many me-toos are highly successful. But it can be infuriating to the original inventor of the idea to see their inventiveness leapt on and exploited - for [...]