Ad wars: Recycling in different forms

With the changing trends and lifestyles, every five years the categories which advertise aggressively also change. Back then in 1996, during the Wills cricket World Cup, held in the sub-continent, Coca Cola came up with a campaign that said — Official Sponsors of the World Cup. Pepsi on the other hand, combated it with, Pepsi-Nothing Official about It! Young India at that time had begun to spread its wings and the Cola war continued between the two Cola giants with a series of retaliatory advertising.

In the 90s itself, Exide battery and Standard Furukawa fought for supremacy. Standard Furukawa occupied a minimal share in the car batteries market vis-à-vis Exide. Standard came up with a technological upgradation from dirty black cells to plastic white cells and continued with a series of competitive communication. The threat of the underdog was not taken lightly by Exide and the battle ended with Exide buying over Standard Furukawa.

Another famous duel was fought between Colgate and Pepsodent where in Pepsodent’s ad, the boys were asked the name of the toothpaste they had used. While one boy said Pepsodent, the response of the second boy (with germs left after brushing) was muted. However, the lip movement of the boy indicated ‘Colgate’. The market share of toothpaste for Colgate and Hindustan Lever was 59% and 27% respectively at that time. Such cut throat competitive advertising went on till some time until the product was in popularity.

The past decade is lined with numerous such legendary tussles, such as, Bajaj vs. Hero Honda, Rin vs. Tide, Lakme vs. Garnier, Pantene vs. Dove et al. where brands have gone all out in their attempt to capture the market space as well as the consumer’s mind space. One of the most talked about targeted ad wars was Maruti vs. Hyundai. It was the first time that competitive charts had started to appear in advertising. In the advertisement, published in August 2006 in some English dailies, Maruti had compared its cars with that of other car-makers, including Hyundai’s, and claimed that resale value and mileage were higher while the maintenance cost was lower for its models as against those of its rivals. Hyundai had alleged that Maruti’s advertisement was a fit case of “unfair trade practices” and was intended only to mislead the consumers.

Each era will find one competitive market and keep on fighting. The same categories mostly never come back to aggressively wage a battle again. Telecom is currently the one that is experiencing such reactive turbulence. All this makes up for some excitement amongst consumers but the efficacy of such a kind of advertising is still doubtful. Who would be the next in the future? Well, we’ll have to wait and watch…

The author is National Creative Director, Leo Burnett