Original tank image credit: Ryoma Onita

The Losing Battle of KIND vs. Clif Bar

Mentioning a competitor’s brand may work but it can also backfire.

In case you’ve missed it, a war is being waged by two snack bar brands since March. Unfortunately, neither one of them is coming out looking good. Before I get to why that is, let’s set some context.

How it Began

In March of this year, Clif Bar took out a full-page ad in The New York Times “inviting” KIND to go organic. To be clear, it wasn’t an actual invitation but a back-handed way of marketing Clif Bar by calling out the fact that they use organic ingredients and KIND doesn’t. They also tweeted at KIND:

Needless to say, KIND wasn’t having it:

The Escalation