Brand Wars, inspired from the history – a new era to be written

From those sweet tasting colas to those shiny shampoos, from those healthy health drinks to those luxurious airlines, each brand had their own style & strategy of competing with their rivals though their interesting yet innovative campaigns. It seems that after all that controversy & calmness the brands have again risen to comparative advertising.

It all started with the cola brands, the arch rivals – Coca Cola Inc & Pepsio Co’s series of comparative advertising well know as the cola wars. Both the brands successfully cashed in on this concept to be in the spotlight. This effect was also seen in when Coca‐Cola became the official cold drink of the1996 cricket World Cup & Pepsi greeted coke with the campaign ‘Nothing official about it’. Later, Coke had to reply with another campaign - “Eat Cricket! Sleep Cricket! Drink only Coca‐Cola!” This continued many times before it became stable.

   

Then came the era of detergent wars between Tide & Rin which was taken to court to sort out legally. We have also seen this effect spreading in other industries to other brands like Head & Shoulders and Pantene face-off, Horlicks v/s Complan tussle, & not to be forgotten Sprite v/s Mountain dew panga.

To quote the latest rivalry between The Hindu & TOI, it all started when The Times Of India (TOI) had recently, around November  taken a dig at The 

Hindu with its campaign ‘Wake Up Chennai‘ where they had clearly targeted 

The Hindu. The Hindu commands to be holding the number 1 spot in Chennai, though a late reply it was a awesome reply. It has come up with its ‘Stay Ahead Of The Times’ campaign making an aggressive counter attack at the TOI with it’s different patterned print ads & TVC. Well unlike The Hindu, the TOI had an immediate say on the counter attack with a cool & calm reply in its ad – We congratulate the competition fpr finally waking up.

To conclude, comparative advertising might be good at times to pull the competitor’s leg & be in the spotlight but it might also tarnish a brand’s own image & hurt entire product segment. It is good only to an extent with the campaign being creative & not attacking the rival brand directly.

Woah look at this, the latest buzz is Bajaj Discover targeting it's rival Hero Honda Splendor in it's latest TVC - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyp1QECfas4