If competing brands praise one another, does it send the right signal to consumers, or are they better off dissing the rival in their ads? Here’s our shot at finding out whether considerate or competitive advertising works better for a brand
By Neeta Nair
Who doesn’t enjoy watching a good fight... especially when prestigious brands roll up their sleeves to exchange blows, and get downright dirty splashing mud all over their competitors, albeit in adland? Now cut to a scenario where brands take the higher moral ground acknowledging each other’s presence, even welcoming their competitors in a certain space... would that be more interesting to watch? Does Scene 1 or Scene 2 help brands grab more eyeballs? Let’s make an attempt to find out.
Recently, passengers waiting at the Mumbai airport were greeted with a hoarding by an eager-to-please Air India which read, “Wish you a comfortable flight. Next time fly with Air India and feel the difference.” It would have been perceived as a routine marketing exercise, had the ad not been positioned at the check-in counters of rival airline IndiGo. The latter wasted no time in responding by propping up a standee at AI’s check-in bay: “Yes, Air India, there is a difference. Says the Government.” They backed their claim with the Government’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) data, which showed that IndiGo’s on-time performance was best and AI's worst. It then spiralled into a full-fledged battle of wits giving bored travellers something to talk about at the airport.
Similarly, a few months ago, people woke up to newspaper jacket ads by Future Group’s Brand Factory where India’s biggest retail chain was seen launching an offensive against its online rivals. The cheeky taglines Flip the Cart, Snap the Deal and Amaz-Off took readers by surprise because so far, they had only seen the three e-commerce giants trading jibes. This was the first time a retail player had entered the game.
Talking about this strategy of one-upmanship, which advertisers have been using for decades Josy Paul, Chairman and National Creative Director, BBDO India says, “Comparative advertising works for challenger brands. It helps them gain instant recognition using the leader as the reference. Consumers benefit too. It gives them an interesting sense of their choice. It also works for the category because it increases the overall noise, focus and conversation around it.”
CHALLENGER VS MARKET LEADER
Challenger brand IDFC Bank recently came up with a campaign spoofing taglines of leading banks like HDFC’s ‘Sar Utha Ke Jiyo’ to showcase IDFC as a fresh alternative to banking, slamming the clichés and jargons that exist in the space.
Talking about this instance of competitive advertising, Gaurav Rajput, Chief Marketing Officer, IDFC Bank, says “We didn’t try to run anyone down. If you are saying that your brand has something new to offer, you also need to show what is old, using a competitor’s work as a point of reference. Today, banks focus on relationship-building more than the efficiency of transactions. Unlike our parents, who preferred to enjoy a cup of tea with the bank manager along with conversations when they visited the branch, the youth today is only interested in efficient and quick banking solutions which we provide.”
But at a time when brands are coming up with more and more novel strategies to win the consumer’s loyalty, does potshot advertising help cut any ice with the consumer? Says Rajput, “Our campaign has brought a smile to people’s faces and helped get the brand noticed. Our call centres have seen almost 70-80% growth in inbound call volumes and overall our website traffic grew by 180% post the release of our TVCs. There was a dramatic jump in some of those metrics, because we managed to stand out in the clutter.”
An ad like this definitely does the first job it was cut out for, i.e., grab the consumer’s attention. In fact, it allows a company to directly compare itself to its competitor, and highlight the point of dominance over them. However, it is a huge risk to take, especially if the competitor bites the bait and in turn challenges the first brand with an even more hard-hitting response.
POTSHOT ADVERTISING
The year 2012 saw the most epic ad wars between two top publications, The Hindu and The Times of India. While launching in Chennai, TOI provoked The Hindu in the latter’s biggest market with the tagline 'Stuck with news that puts you to sleep?’. The Hindu hit back by telling its readers to ‘Stay Ahead of the Times’ by reading relevant news and not just celebrity gossip. Several jibes were traded in Television commercials and Print ads that followed.
So, do ad agencies consider competitive advertising as a win-win formula? Ravi Deshpande, Founder, Whyness Worldwide, says, “Such a strategy would work but only briefly, because once you get into an argument, there is no end to it. So, it’s best to concentrate on yourself. There are a million nice ways to communicate the strengths of your brand. I am not saying that you can’t for a strategic reason create a highly competitive ad, but that is just a one-off thing, it cannot be a permanent approach.”
In most cases, it is a provocation by the first brand that warrants a retaliatory ad, but there have been instances when brands have seen entire campaigns being hijacked by their competitors using a simple play of words. In 2010, P&G’s Pantene, in a bid to unveil a new shampoo, set up hoardings across Mumbai with an intriguing announcement — “A mystery shampoo... 80% women say it is better than anything else.” But before it could unveil the brand, a new set of hoardings appeared in the city next to the P&G ads, declaring — “There is no mystery. Dove is the No. 1 shampoo.” The battle then moved to Print ads, with P&G’s retaliation, and both companies went to town, issuing statements slamming one another.
Meanwhile, some brands choose not to respond to jibes at all, even when cornered by competitors. In 2015, Nestle’s Maggi was going through a bad phase after facing a government ban. Many competitors used the controversy to their advantage, harping on their brand’s safety aspect in their ads. Baba Ramdev, the brand ambassador of Patanjali noodles, even demanded an apology from Nestle, accusing it of ‘spreading poison in the country’. On whether Nestle had ever considered responding to the jibes, Suresh Narayanan, Chairman and MD, Nestle India Ltd says, “It would not be an eye for an eye, as far as we are concerned. We won’t go back and say something ill about them. It is okay, somebody took potshots at my brand, but my reaction was neither to get belligerent nor defensive.” The strategy of not engaging with competition over ad wars, among other things, surely seems to have paid off for Nestle, because Maggi has overcome the crisis and is leading the noodle market once again.
Another FMCG brand, Britannia, agrees with the thought but not without a disclaimer. Ali Harris-Shere, VP Marketing, Britannia Industries, says, “While you are doing what you should be doing for your brand, you can’t be blind to the competitive environment around you. Your competitor will have his own agenda, but while they work on different activities that suit them, you may need to act to safeguard yourself and your territory. You need to respond in a healthy manner sometimes.”
WHAT WORKS BETTER - COMPARATIVE OR CONSIDERATE ADVERTISING?
“Bajaj’s recent advertising showing Enfield is beautifully done and has a great theme. Brands can take it a step further and come together on common causes like malnutrition or education for the girl child or even Swachh Bharat. At the end of the day, all brands serve the same society and on platforms like this, 10 of us coming together will make a much bigger impact leading to the betterment of the consumer and the industry.”
Suresh Narayanan
Chairman & MD, Nestle India Ltd
“I can’t say which strategy is more effective than the other. If you have an honest superiority over competition, then there is no harm talking about it. There should be a solid strategy behind it and the people should feel the advantage you have over competition, else it just becomes an attention-seeking stunt.”
Arun Iyer
Chief Creative Officer, Lowe Lintas
“Be a winner not by bringing someone down, but by running faster yourself and because you are better at what you do. Referencing your product with other brands is a waste of time. I don’t endorse something like the cola wars. But if brands want to be magnanimous about it, like how Jaguar welcomed Jeep to India, then it is great as long as it goes with the brand tone and shows the brand’s perspective clearly.”
Russell Barrett
Managing Partner and CCO, BBH India
“Many FMCG brands have used competitive advertising successfully over the years, especially challenger brands. But it really depends on the ethos of your brand. Some brands like eBay are in a race with themselves, so it doesn’t matter what the competition is doing. As far as eBay is concerned, we would prefer to contribute rather than compete with other brands.”
Shivani Suri
Director Marketing, eBay India
“Considerate advertising is a healthy concept. We at Uber believe that at the end of the day, healthy competition is always good. It helps us to push ourselves to the limit in terms of providing the best experience for riders and drivers. And healthy interactions like these are always good. So if there is a good opportunity, I don’t think we would let it go.”
Ashwin Dias
General Manager, Uber
“There is always a strategic reason for a brand showing a brotherly attitude towards another, and appearing to be a fearless and more secure competitor. Competing fiercely is the need of the hour but if done nicely and subtly, it gets better and brand like Bajaj Avenger are well aware of that. Also, putting one another down in a mature market doesn’t always work because consumers are well aware of what to buy - they can make their choices without any help.
Ravi Deshpande
Founder, Whyness Worldwide
NO HOLDS BARRED FIGHT
There are cases where brands go a step further by showing the competitor’s product in their ads to claim superiority. In 2013, for the very first time, the Indian arm of British FMCG major Reckitt Benckiser directly attacked HUL in its television commercial by showing rival Vim in its ad for Dettol Kitchen Gel. There was no air-brushing or pixelating the competitor's brand, which was the norm earlier. A miffed HUL then appealed to the Calcutta High Court for a stay order which was denied. It then fought back with front page ads in dailies claiming Lifebuoy works better than Dettol antiseptic liquid. HUL’s Rin too tried something similar with rival Tide Naturals, but it ran into trouble with the Advertising Standards Council of India and had to withdraw the ad from Television.
Comparative advertising has always existed and will continue to exist in India. An early example is the Tata Salt vs. Captain Cook commercial, which sparred on the free-flowing quality of the salt in question, with a blurred packet of the competitor’s product on screen. Then came the heated battles between Coke and Pepsi, which forced almost all cola drinkers to take sides. Be it Pepsi’s ‘Nothing official about it’ campaign to steal Coke’s thunder when it became the official partner of the 1996 Cricket World Cup or Coca Cola’s Sprite making a spoof on Pepsi’s ‘Yeh Dil Maange More’ and Youngistan campaigns - the battle between the cola majors continued until it fizzled out around 2006, post the pesticide controversy.
Says Anand Chakravarthy, Managing Partner, Maxus, “Over the past many years, both cola brands realized that while they were spending big dollars on countering each other, the consumer was choosing to drink nimbu pani in India. So, they were obviously not getting the share of throat that they wanted. Rather than spending advertising money on putting each other down, both brands are now focusing on the task of getting people to consume more of their beverages. They tried to replicate their age-old rivalry from the West, but in India it doesn’t always work.”
CONSIDERATE COMPETITOR
In the business of advertising, everyone exists to make the customer buy products, and putting a competitor down has traditionally been seen as an effective way to draw consumers to your brand. But lately, we see a different trend - some brands are openly congratulating rivals on social networking sites, even offering to work jointly on a particular day, and some are releasing TVCs addressing a competitor as a brother.
A couple of months ago, there was an ad on Television which showed beautiful landscapes, a soothing voice-over and a Royal Enfield bike. Most thought it was an ad for the much loved Bullet, but they were in for a surprise, because the last leg of the ad showed a Bajaj Avenger riding along with an Enfield. It was a fairly bold step for a brand to give so much of screen space to the market leader in the cruiser bikes space and not attempt to show the competitor in bad light.
Elaborating on it, Sumeet Narang, Vice-President, Marketing, Motorcycles, Bajaj Auto says, “Avenger stands for liberation, and we wanted to show liberation from competitiveness on the road through the Brotherhood ad. We picked Royal Enfield owing to its immense popularity. It helped generate a lot of conversations, and was trending for a long time. We wanted to create a positive positioning for Avenger and the Brotherhood campaign helped us achieve that.”
Experts argue that through this campaign, a fairly new bike - Bajaj Avenger - very cleverly attempted to play in the club of the iconic Royal Enfield. Not surprisingly, Royal Enfield gave a cold shoulder when Bajaj tagged its ad on the former’s Twitter handle. Narang explains, “We just thought of officially presenting the film to Royal Enfield. We didn’t tag them to initiate a dialogue with them. It was more about acknowledging another industry player, especially because our ad had drawn a story between our brands. It is not for me to comment on what Royal Enfield should have done. But if another brand tags me in an ad, and it is done in a nice way, then I would at least acknowledge it.”
Amer Jaleel, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer, Mullen Lintas, whose team made the Bajaj Brotherhood commercial, gives a more tactical explanation: “It is a two-horse race between Bajaj Avenger and Royal Enfield, but no one looks at it like that. They think Enfield is the only big brand in the space. So we found a good strategy to align ourselves with Enfield through this campaign. When Enfield and Avenger ride together, it enters the same set of consideration in the minds of the consumer. Very craftily, we have put our brand at the same level as the market leader.”
When asked why they didn’t take the usual competitive route for showing brand superiority, Jaleel says, “We wanted to make Avenger look bigger than Royal Enfield, but not by using product comparison. We said let’s be gracious and large-hearted by showing Enfield in the larger part of the commercial; it makes sense because Enfield is the dominant brand in people’s minds anyway. Any brand that appears to be accommodating competition has a shot at looking bigger than its rivals.”
NOT ALL BRANDS ARE RECEPTIVE
Bajaj Avenger-Royal Enfield is certainly not a one-off case. One of the most celebrated ads at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity this year - McWhopper - was also about two big rival brands appearing to set aside their differences. Burger King, in a passive-aggressive move, published full page newspaper ads inviting McDonald’s to celebrate Peace Day by collaborating on a limited edition burger, McWhopper, for 24 hours. But McDonald’s clearly didn’t want to be painted into a corner by Burger King and its CEO Steve Easterbrook rejected the proposal in a sarcastic letter addressed to the brand on Facebook. But experts don’t think choosing pride over proposal was a wise idea.
Swapnil Puranik, Head of Strategy, Mumbai, Razorfish India says, “Not accepting the invitation gave McDonald’s a lot of negative publicity on social media. Ideally, it should have played along for a day. But Royal Enfield didn’t meet with the same fate by not engaging with Bajaj Avenger. While Burger King was seeking a response from McDonald’s, Bajaj just stated the fact – the obvious - and didn’t ask for a response from Royal Enfield. The difference here is the market insight in these two distant categories. Bajaj realizes that bikers form a closed community with a strong sense of ‘brotherhood’ which is not necessarily applicable in a casual segment such as fast food.”
Another fast food giant, KFC, too extended a hand of friendship towards McDonald’s on Twitter, which also didn’t cut ice with the brand. Says Lluis Ruiz Ribot, Chief Marketing Officer, KFC India, “To promote the KFC Friendship Bucket and our ‘Unlikely Friendship’ campaign, we asked consumers on Twitter ‘Which unlikely pair accordingly to them should share the Friendship Bucket?’ So, when one of our fans asked us to extend a Friendship Bucket to McDonald’s, we thought why not? Celebrating the spirit of the campaign, we extended a hand of friendship to McDonald’s – the Friendship Bucket. We do wish they had responded but we undertook this celebrating the core essence of our campaign, something that our fans appreciated and recognized.”
Engaging your competitor in friendly banter on social media has a host of benefits. The brand automatically gets to reach out to its competitor’s loyalists, which would otherwise be a zone difficult to break into; and it can be done at zero cost. Also, it helps a brand to indirectly speak to the followers of any rival brand without appearing to be aggressively wooing them, thereby leaving a bare minimum risk of being trolled.
Commenting on why McDonald’s did not take the conversation with KFC forward, Kedar Teny, Director - Marketing & Digital, McDonald’s India - West & South says, “McDonald's believes in creating unique and clutter-breaking brand campaigns, just like we did with #KuchPalOffline and its extension #ThodaTimeAur. We don’t feel the need to ride on promotions and advertising strategies of other brands or even borrow ideas as we firmly believe in leading and innovating cross-functionally across the food and beverages retail industry. We design and follow a strategic marketing and communications approach, in line with our long term plan and not just promotion-led.”
FOR EVOLVED AUDIENCES ONLY
Some brands choose to respond to advances by rivals. Earlier this year, when Fiat Chrysler’s marquee brand Jeep decided to debut in India, Jaguar Land Rover welcomed its competitor with this tweet, “Welcome JeepIndia! Hope the Indian outdoors are as fun for you as they are for Land Rover. #JeepNowInIndia.” A short while later, Jeep acknowledged the gesture and tweeted in response, “Thank you @JLRIndia for the warm welcome. We are here to chase every adventure. #JeepNowInIndia.”
Justifying the decision to engage with JLR, Rahul Pansare, Head of Marketing, FCA India, says, “It was nice of JLR India to have welcomed us with the public gesture and we reciprocated appropriately. It was as simple as that for us. There may be various theories as to what their intent could have been, and our reaction to it, but we consider this a healthy exchange between two global SUV brands, which are traditional competitors. Different companies might have different ways of looking at the competition and social media approach. However, we thought we should respond to our globally traditional rival as warmly as they welcomed us.”
It was a refreshing change, in a space like automobiles, where car manufacturers are often at each other’s throat. Not too long ago, the same Jaguar ate Merc’s ‘magic chicken’ when it spoofed the rival’s magic body control commercial. More recently, Mercedes Benz congratulated BMW on its 100th anniversary, though in a rather tongue in cheek fashion, by inviting BMW employees to "tour 130 years of automotive history”. One of the tweets in reply mentioned the first 30 years were quite boring!
But if one were to compare this with other categories, it is largely the high end automobile and motorcycle space which looks comfortable embracing this trend of complimenting or acknowledging a competitor. Decoding it, Chakravarthy says, “At the top end of the market, the brand custodians are aware that their audiences are very evolved and they will appreciate a brand not dissing a rival. It won’t work in sectors where the audience is very mass and of varying sensibilities like FMCG and Telecom. If you tell such an audience that the competitor is great, there is a risk of them actually believing you and switching over to your rival.”
Coming back to the Burger King and McDonald’s example, he adds, “The McWhopper case study is a rare instance which resulted in the sales of not just Burger King but also its competitor McDonald’s going up. But the truth is that, a vast majority of Indian brands are busy dissing others in the same category. The best example is Patanjali, where Baba Ramdev himself is telling everyone that any product manufactured by a multinational has some kind of problem. The strategy is working for him, and he is growing very fast. All the FMCG giants who earlier thought that their market-share would never be challenged, are in for a surprise.”
@ FEEDBACK neeta.nair@exchange4media.com
