Call it the classic case of combative advertising. After Cadbury India and Nestl?, detergent majors Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) and Procter & Gamble India are now engaged in a bitter advertising war. With the launch of its new ad campaign for Rin, HUL has directly taken on P&G?s detergent brand Tide Naturals in its communications. With the tagline Tide se kahin behatar safedi de Rin, HUL?s ad directly compares the washing power of Rin with that of Tide. As a result, battle lines are being redrawn in the Rs 4,500-crore branded detergent sector in India. Combative advertising, also known as guerrilla marketing, is back in India after a gap of few months.
Similar battles were fought between cola majors PepsiCo and Coca-Cola India in the past few years. Last year, chocolate majors Cadbury India and Nestl? also locked horns over the much-hyped ?Pehli Tarikh ad?. Nestl??s spoof on Cadbury?s ?Pehli Tarikh Ad? created bad blood between the two archrivals. It is not just the highly competitive categories such as colas, detergents and automobiles that are resorting to combative advertising to settle scores. Advertisers across categories are now opting for this mode of advertising to grab the attention of consumers.
Why do companies opt for this mode of advertising? Primarily, companies opt for combative advertising technique to grab eyeballs and negative attention. Clearly, HUL has succeeded in catching the attention of millions of viewers in the last two days. In mature markets with competing firms, a common role for advertising is to shift consumer preferences towards the advertiser in a tug-of-war, with no effect on category demand. Traditionally used as a combative tool by advertisers to draw negative attention to competitors, spoof advertising has moved well past this in India.
As a result, advertisers across categories are now spoofing media content to cut through the clutter and infuse combative advertising into their campaigns. This helps the brand ensure high recall, as the spoof is usually on popular content that is easily identifiable.
?lalitha.srinivasan@expressindia.com