Rising to the challenge

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: Years ago, car rental company Avis made a virtue of playing second fiddle. With an ingenious marketing campaign, “We’re number 2; we try harder”, Avis closed the gap with front-runner Hertz.

Challenger brands like Avis have to be more than creative in differentiating their brands simply because they do not have market dominance as their key attribute. Unlike market leaders, therefore, they have to create a compelling reason for consumers to, first try their product, and then, continue to use it. And if they are among those with oodles of self-confidence and derring-do, take the champion head-on.

Take FMCG major Henkel India’s latest TV campaign for flagship dishwash, Pril Liquid. The new release that is currently on air features south Indian actress Shobhana challenging viewers to junk their preferred dishwash bar soaps and take up Pril Liquid “One Drop Challenge.” A la Aman Verma hauling the camera all the way into people’s bathrooms to demonstrate the superiority of sanitary disinfectant, Harpic (the mantle has since passed on to Roshan Abbas). Or Tide’s Pehelwan Challenge, where a burly guy challenges a motley band of wrestlers (Agar gyarah rupay mein is se behtar safedi mil sakti hai/To yeh sukdu bhi Bhima ko pattak sakta hai”).

In the case of Pril, which has over 72% market share in the dishwash category (as per ACNielsen), this ad seeks to drive home the superior product parameters with the claim “One drop is enough to clean the toughest stain.” “With the Tide ad, we wanted to strike home the ‘disbelief’ manifest in the offer,” explains Nitesh Tiwari, executive creative director, Leo Burnett. The brief to the media agency, according to Tiwari was to declare the ‘core proposition’ of the brand, which is ‘top value for money.’ In other words, if you doubt it, try it!

But does the challenge format work across categories? Not really.

Shekar Swamy, president, RK Swamy/BBDO, says, “Challenge ads work best when we can establish a clear promise of superior performance. Such strategies are followed when a marketer wants to change the status quo, or move the consumer to think differently.”