Home care brand Beco has been around since 2019 and offers plant-based alternatives to conventional chemical cleaners. Suddenly many consumers are talking about it on social media; many more are discovering it.
If you talk to brand experts, 50% of its job is done.
This August, Beco launched its WarOnWhatsHidden ad campaign where it compared its liquid laundry detergent with Hindustan Unilever‘s Surf Excel and its dishwashing liquid with Vim. The films and social media posts highlighted the presence of linear alkylbenzene sulfonate (LAS) and benzisothiazolinone (BIT) in the competing products, and touted Beco as a superior alternative.
The ads claimed that these ingredients caused skin irritation and urged consumers to switch to Beco’s liquid dishwasher and laundry cleaner which purportedly do not contain such harmful ingredients. HUL sued Beco’s parent company, Kwick Living, for trademark infringement and commercial disparagement. HUL’s leadership defended their products, stating they are completely safe and fully compliant with Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) norms.
The case remains in the news. So does Beco.
In August itself, Urban Company sued water purifier maker Kent RO Systems in the Delhi High Court over an ad campaign that allegedly called the two-year service and filter life offered on its Native purifiers a “marketing gimmick”, and said that using the product was “unsafe” and “risky”. Kent RO has agreed to pull down all the related advertising content.
Naqeeb Ahmed Kazia, partner, CMS Induslaw, says Indian courts have on multiple occasions recognised comparative advertising as permissible, including the right of an advertiser to highlight the advantages of its own product compared with a competitor’s product. But disparagement — where the competing product is portrayed in a manner that undervalues, discredits or denigrates it through false, misleading or unsubstantiated claims — is not allowed.
“Courts have recognised that a certain degree of puffery or exaggeration is permissible so long as it does not unfairly disparage the competing product. Section 29(8) of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 addresses certain forms of unfair or detrimental use of trademarks in advertising, while Section 30(1) recognises honest comparative use,” he adds.
Experts believe that as long as a brand can back its claims with evidence, naming a rival brand in an ad is permissible. “Under Chapter IV of the ASCI Code, brands can compare their products with competitors, including naming them, provided the comparison is clear, factual, evidence-based and not misleading or disparaging,” points out Manisha Kapoor, secretary general & CEO, Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI).
She states that though comparative ads are permissible, brands should avoid selective presentation, exaggeration or unjustifiable use of another brand’s name or reputation, and be particularly careful with claims relating to performance, safety, health or ingredients.
These two recent cases have brought to light the age-old tactics of brands — of picking on their rivals to demonstrate their products’ desirability. Interestingly, in the first case it’s a startup that made the sudden attact, while in the second, it’s a recognised market leader that fired the first salvo.
The big question is, how worthwhile is comparative advertising? What about the bother of defending your brand before governing bodies should competitors choose to hit back legally. And what about the fact that at the end of the day a comparative ad ends up drawing attention to the rival brand?
The takeaways
When there is a brand that is entrenched in the market or occupies dominant mindshare, the number two or number three brands or even a new entrant can determine that their shares will come at the expense of the leader, “More often, lesser-known or smaller brands run such campaigns so they can get some eyeballs, as their name gets associated with a bigger brand,” says Ambi Parameswaran, branding veteran & founder, brand-building.com.
To be sure, Surf Excel generated Rs 11,000 in revenues in FY26 and dominates the high-end tier of the liquid detergents segment with variants like Surf Excel Matic Liquid. But laundry liquid penetration is only around 13%, which means there’s a massive growth headroom for brands in the category.
The move by Kent RO is unusual. “When an established brand takes on a newcomer, it does give a signal that the newcomer is causing some trouble for the incumbents,” says Naresh Gupta, CSO & managing partner, Bang In The Middle.
That any sort of comparative advertising should — if at all — be done only by the challenger brands, not the market leader, is something experts agree on. A market leader will try and ignore any rival. So Coke will never make any reference to any drink, let alone Pepsi that has made it a virtue of taking potshots at the leader. If it does, it would be acknowledging the competition. And no market leader can afford to look desperate or threatened.
According to Gupta from Bang In The Middle, such ads can only give brands a short term momentum. “Today’s consumers are brand agnostic, they do not have any loyalty for a brand unlike in the past when we had two separate camps for Coca-Cola or Pepsi. Now, people are open to experimentation and to trying out new brands.”
Net net, when usage and penetration are low — as in the case of liquid cleaners and RO purifiers — any comparative advertising might be as useful as a white crayon and reduce the whole communication exercise to an advertising war between the respective advertising agencies.