Ad Wars?

"survival of the fittest"

If u have to survive, u got to fight... but these 'ad wars' are not quite about survival! especially when 2 established/known/popular brands get involved in such an act, its mainly to establish their supremacy over each other.

 What does the company try to convey through these ad wars?

• to the consumers: "we're the best (or maybe better)"
• to the other company(s) - competitor(s): "we're better than you buddy". "we've got better marketing minds than you", "we can handle situations", "we can retaliate" etc..

Some of the popular ones:

• The ultimate cola war (most popular)
• HUL vs P&G
• Audi vs BMW
• MacD vs Subway
• Horlicks vs Complan
• Nestle vs cadbury
• the airline companies

 

Can we call this kind of war 'cheap'? It's like two 3rd grade kids fighting (immatured?), like cartman and kyle! or can we compare it with what politicians do during elections?

BMW vs Audi:


BMW billboard from Juggernaut Advertising on Vimeo.

Nestle vs Cadburys



Is it all about who can make better advertisements? --- probably!

Do we dare talk about ethics, decency, professionalism etc? do they make sense here?
actually they don't... when someone challenges you, you take the challenge and fight them.
"one should not fight for the sake of fighting, only when there is no other choice..." (sounds lame?). but that's when someone challenges you. What can we say about the one who starts the fight/war?

Actually it takes this much "(  )" of courage to start such a war...  this much "(  )" more than what you already have :)

Rin (HUL) vs Tide (P&G):



when HUL comes up with such an ad against P&G (head-on collision), that requires much more courage. P&G dragged HUL to the court and after so much of drama, the ad was banned. Ideally a company of  P&G's caliber should have retaliated differently (i am not very sure if P&G came up with similar ads or some other professional technique), instead of dragging HUL to the court (an act of cowardice?)... It's no doubt a desperate attempt by HUL to gain P&G's market share, but still...

Sometimes a breakthrough success of one company might make the other one come up with such ads:

Sometimes the company might make arrangements which might look natural/coincidental, with the very intention of defaming the competitor...
                 (a picture like this is, would obviously create some buzz among the consumers)

My all time fav:- during the cricket world cup 1996, Coca Cola came up with the ad campaign "eat cricket, sleep cricket... but drink only coca cola...". Ajay Jadeja and Azaruddin came in one of these ads eating cricket bat, stumps etc. pepsi mocked this by using monkeys in their ads which would eat cricket bats, establishing that only monkeys are stupid enough to eat cricket stuff and drink coke.

And we cannot possibly forget how mountain dew got mocked by other manufacturers... the worst ever :)

now what about the companies that are not a part of this war? they're just curious onlookers? or do they think it's unnecessary? or do they want to stay away? or are they handicapped?

How hard is it to 'mind your own business' and do business???

Please try to answer the above questions...

...and check out this one!