Continued from part 2....>>>>>>
Spontaneous trait transference as we saw it may or may not happen when brand A compares itself with Brand B but one thing that can for sure happen among the masses that see the ad is the phenomenon that ad researchers have termed as sponsor misidentification. This is the customer/viewer confusion as to who is actually sponsoring the ad is many a times a main by product of such comparative advertising.....
When the viewer belongs to the so called SEC A (the upper strata) may be the story becomes different and the job may be done…I mean the ad may be effective in the sense brand recall may happen but assuming that recall and attention is equal to ad effectiveness would be as stupid as assuming that since people have a smile when they see you they simply love you…But in any case direct comparative ads are far better and decent than the indirect comparative ones( remember the Pepsi vs Thumbs up humbug some time back)
Marketing is war and the war strategies are used without mercy here as well.. Defense and offense.. no matter what ..the end result is what matters… finding weakness in the leaders key strength is the main and most usable offensive principle in the marketing warfare.. as Pepsi would vouch and its war with Coca cola over the last so many years bears testimony. Coke had to claim that they are “The real thing” in face of such offense which later was abandoned for the lesser impressive and unexciting “Coke is it” and the rest is history .Coke is what? Or what is it? you may never get and answer….The blind tests that Pepsi did and since it was a bit sweeter than coke (9% to be precise) the tests favoured Pepsi and in the worst of marketing blunders coke changed its formula and bottle.. Now the Real thing had gone and Coke jumped into the new and improved bandwagon when its users wanted and loved and bought it for the OLD taste/sweet/formula/communication/brand whatever it stood for. The real thing that coke was had made the difference and it was lost in one stroke… this is what too much of comparison can do to anyone… even the giants….
It can some times be really dirty and cruel jokes.. Hyundai dealers in north were discredited to have come up with ads ridiculing their competitors who sold the Daewoo cars with tag lines “Car at your homes, company on the roads” when Daewoo ran into rough weather financially and went bankrupt. For Daewoo who introduced the concept of comparative advertising in India ( decent and side by side or A-B comparison) this below the belt attack came as a rude shock and for the people who saw it, it was free knowledge that even car majors can go bankrupt… if it is Daewoo today it can be Hyundai tomorrow….
To sum up let us derive some rules for those who are hell bend on comparing and get compared….
1 Comparative advertising should not be misleading and should not make improper use of the reputation and name of the competitor .
2 Comparative advertising should only compare things that can be compared.
'apples and oranges' are two different things…
3 Comparative advertising should objectively compare demonstrable results.
The comparison must impartially compare relevant, verifiable and representative characteristics of the goods and services, such as price, reliability, quantity and safety.
4 Comparative advertising should not confuse the consumer.
The consumer must not be made to think that the comparative advertising originates with the competitor (hope Horlicks and Complan is listening..)
5 Comparative advertising should not negatively reflect on the competitor.
The comparative advertising must not harm the competitor's good name or be disparaging with regard to his brands, activities or products( ahem!!!)
The consumer is a smart ass.. or that is what he believes at least. The last tirade and the war of statistics/ facts/figures and fiction between the two malt majors- Horlicks and Complan reminds me of the proverbial crabs… no one will allow another one to climb up…
And that is to say the least…. !!!
Tail piece:-
How do you compare American, British and Canadian English?
Americans: Spell words differently, but still call it "English".
Brits: Pronounce their words differently, but still call it "English".
Canadians: Spell like the Brits, pronounce like Americans.
Showing posts with label comparitive advertising. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comparitive advertising. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Horlicks or Complan-the comparison war !!...part 2
Continued from part I....
To recap from part one where I left you with…
1. Comparative advertising is a form of advertising in which two or more named or recognizable brands of the same product class are compared and the comparison is made in terms of one or more product attributes. That is definition but the clause of the SAME PRODUCT CLASS MAY CHANGE AND STILL IT COULD BE CALLED COMPARATIVE ADVERTISING)
2. The comparisons can be:-
a. implicit (brands implied but not named), or explicit (brands named);
b. the comparisons can be vocal or visual;
c. and the claims can be of complete advantage, of supremacy on some attributes but not on others, or of parity;
d. And the advertised brand can have a market share smaller than, roughly equal to, or greater than the comparison brand. (Even the leader can compare but why the hell?)
3. Regulations and norms about comparative advertising differ around the world, (some have no rules while others have tough ones.. some are liberal like the US ( see the Pepsi joy of life ad and you will know how liberal is liberal..) While in some like India it takes time to interpret as is the case in the Horlicks vs Complan court battle now.
Now getting on….I have answered a couple of phone calls and many mails and scraps on this topic particularly from friends who haven’t gone and lived abroad. Now that gives me enough reason to conclude that this is a cultural shock and may be to an extend when it happens more , when more brands compare and get compared the average viewer in India will get accustomed to the fact that the compared and the comparing are all the same, like the political parties.
Interestingly, all academic research that I was browsing through seems to support the logic that a direct comparative ad from a market follower is least likely to lead to higher awareness for the compared-to market leader (because the market leader is already well known), whereas a market-leading brand has the most to lose from a direct comparative ad (by creating "free" awareness for the compared-to smaller brand). This leads to the conclusion that while low-share brands ought to use direct comparative ads; market leaders perhaps ought to use non comparative or indirectly comparative ads (those that don't name competitors). … Hmmm…. that made me ponder and yawn… the academic researchers have missed it somewhere or the Horlicks guys haven’t heard of this logic… whatever is the case this new one in Indian advertising is amusing and if it goes on you will get to see everyone jumping into the fray and agencies encouraged to wash more dirty linen and open all cupboards and skeletons falling down…
Followers may (!) gain more from direct comparative ads in another way which the leader if he initiates the comparison war will find it later a curse of his own creation. The comparison ads may make the buyer put both the brands in the same "consideration set," by increasing the degree to which they are perceived as similar to each other. Comparative advertising in that case becomes more and much more effective than the regular ones where one just extol ones own virtues .The supposed distance between the leader and the follower which when is higher ,the leader stands to gain and when the distance lessens the advantage is lost and the follower stands closer to the leader.. Is Horlicks listening?
Studies, studies and more studies and yet the market remains as elusive as it was even before all these studies…The more the closer it becomes to the leader, naturally the higher should be the sales of the compared you thought? Not always .....says another study (!!)…. who is compared and with who is compared is another issue…? who attacks and who counter attacks is also important Forget all the studies ..one cannot seriously think that this war will cut deep into Horlicks share and leave Complan smiling…It would be, to put it simply, foolish to assume that comparative ads sway attitudes and preferences because, while people may indeed notice them more, they nonetheless may consider such ads as disgusting, less believable and less informative (especially if they happen to like the brand being shown in a negative light.)
Worse they may even attach with the accuser, all those worse things that one accuses of the other …when Horlicks says Complan is bad the consumer may think.. why is Horlicks saying this? Aren’t they equally bad as well?
Psychologists call it as Spontaneous Trait Transference …. But who cares ?
The war is on….
To Be Continued……>>>>>>>>>>
To recap from part one where I left you with…
1. Comparative advertising is a form of advertising in which two or more named or recognizable brands of the same product class are compared and the comparison is made in terms of one or more product attributes. That is definition but the clause of the SAME PRODUCT CLASS MAY CHANGE AND STILL IT COULD BE CALLED COMPARATIVE ADVERTISING)
2. The comparisons can be:-
a. implicit (brands implied but not named), or explicit (brands named);
b. the comparisons can be vocal or visual;
c. and the claims can be of complete advantage, of supremacy on some attributes but not on others, or of parity;
d. And the advertised brand can have a market share smaller than, roughly equal to, or greater than the comparison brand. (Even the leader can compare but why the hell?)
3. Regulations and norms about comparative advertising differ around the world, (some have no rules while others have tough ones.. some are liberal like the US ( see the Pepsi joy of life ad and you will know how liberal is liberal..) While in some like India it takes time to interpret as is the case in the Horlicks vs Complan court battle now.
Now getting on….I have answered a couple of phone calls and many mails and scraps on this topic particularly from friends who haven’t gone and lived abroad. Now that gives me enough reason to conclude that this is a cultural shock and may be to an extend when it happens more , when more brands compare and get compared the average viewer in India will get accustomed to the fact that the compared and the comparing are all the same, like the political parties.
Interestingly, all academic research that I was browsing through seems to support the logic that a direct comparative ad from a market follower is least likely to lead to higher awareness for the compared-to market leader (because the market leader is already well known), whereas a market-leading brand has the most to lose from a direct comparative ad (by creating "free" awareness for the compared-to smaller brand). This leads to the conclusion that while low-share brands ought to use direct comparative ads; market leaders perhaps ought to use non comparative or indirectly comparative ads (those that don't name competitors). … Hmmm…. that made me ponder and yawn… the academic researchers have missed it somewhere or the Horlicks guys haven’t heard of this logic… whatever is the case this new one in Indian advertising is amusing and if it goes on you will get to see everyone jumping into the fray and agencies encouraged to wash more dirty linen and open all cupboards and skeletons falling down…
Followers may (!) gain more from direct comparative ads in another way which the leader if he initiates the comparison war will find it later a curse of his own creation. The comparison ads may make the buyer put both the brands in the same "consideration set," by increasing the degree to which they are perceived as similar to each other. Comparative advertising in that case becomes more and much more effective than the regular ones where one just extol ones own virtues .The supposed distance between the leader and the follower which when is higher ,the leader stands to gain and when the distance lessens the advantage is lost and the follower stands closer to the leader.. Is Horlicks listening?
Studies, studies and more studies and yet the market remains as elusive as it was even before all these studies…The more the closer it becomes to the leader, naturally the higher should be the sales of the compared you thought? Not always .....says another study (!!)…. who is compared and with who is compared is another issue…? who attacks and who counter attacks is also important Forget all the studies ..one cannot seriously think that this war will cut deep into Horlicks share and leave Complan smiling…It would be, to put it simply, foolish to assume that comparative ads sway attitudes and preferences because, while people may indeed notice them more, they nonetheless may consider such ads as disgusting, less believable and less informative (especially if they happen to like the brand being shown in a negative light.)
Worse they may even attach with the accuser, all those worse things that one accuses of the other …when Horlicks says Complan is bad the consumer may think.. why is Horlicks saying this? Aren’t they equally bad as well?
Psychologists call it as Spontaneous Trait Transference …. But who cares ?
The war is on….
To Be Continued……>>>>>>>>>>
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Horlicks or Complan? the comparison war!!!
"Beauty is a relation, and the apprehension of it a comparison".....
------ Gerard Manley Hopkins
The recent Horlicks – Complan spate has triggered a new row hitherto unseen and unheard in Indian advertising……. Blatant Comparative Advertising.
Comparative advertising, as the name suggests, is advertising where a party (the advertiser) advertises his goods or services by comparing them with the goods or services of another party. Such other party is obviously his competitor and is often the market leader in the business (Horlicks with about 60% and Complan with about 15 %). The comparison is often a desperate attempt to eat into the share of the compared and is characteristically done by either signifying that the advertiser's brand is of the same or a greater quality to that of the compared or by denigrating the quality of the compared product (in the Horlicks vs Complan case both has happened and frankly I am quite confused as to who is saying what and should I stop buying both and go back to age old practices like banana powder and raggi malt).
Now that this ad has evoked the topic, I plan to bring out my gyan on the subject and hammer who ever is bothered to read it. Comparative advertising can be as blatant as the ones that we see now in the Horlicks-Complan who is better and why? war of visuals and words or can even be subdued and suggestive as in case of a Baleno comparing it with the "luxury German cars" on the market. If you rewind a bi,t Captain Cook when it launched had an ad that made a not- so- overt- but -not -so -covert reference to Tata Salt by showing a package that looked exactly like it. As such advertising does not contain any trademarks it is not relevant to the law of trademarks (it may, however, constitute a breach of the code of ethics of the watch dog ASCI who watches and barks but seldom bites).
Comparative advertising as a practice does not have to be limited to the use of the identical trademark, as creative advertisers will often do play of words. It was often used to suggest the brand leader ship that you compare your brand with a brand leader or often an icon but in some other unrelated category. For instance when one writes a copy which says Lotus bawa the BMW in shoes, it is just to show its brand position and not to derive from the brand equity of BMW and for sure not to ridicule or demean it. When Whisper was launched ,again, it was and had to be compared with Carefree listing out the features that the new brand had and the old one didn’t (alas!) but without taking the name of the compared. this left the old one bleeding and the new one absorbing it fully..( the pun is intended)....This again is better off and more acceptable to the compared even though he will grumble but can do nothing more.
If the points in comparison is testable and as long as it is provable it seems the courts have no issues here, and I am told that the Mumbai high court didn’t upheld Complan’s case when Horlicks started the tirade digging at the 23 vital nutrients and all the grow faster claims and bingo they are also here with all the dirty linen on the streets, washed and washed."Dogs have not the power of comparing.A dog will take a small piece of meat as readily as a large, when both are before him” said some one and how true right?? Isnt it a pity that a brand as great as Horlicks has to resort to this scale of gimmickery to sell itself? That but is a different case which we will disscuss in the next episode.
One question I have often heard being asked ( last one week I have heard this many times in the class room)is whether it is "legal" to be doing this…? If it means and generally it means that if you would be in danger of a lawsuit if you ran a comparative ad without asking permission of the other brand….. the attacker can be taken to a court of law if your ad is disparaging, that is if you claim anything about the competitors product (i.e. that your product is cheaper, faster, etc.) and it can not be substantiated in a court of law. One thumb rule is that usually such ads should be done by a reputable agency that uses statistically sound research techniques to make claims (blind taste tests, independent laboratory, etc.) so that the claimant later does not look like a fool falling flat on their face. In extreme cases it can benefit the compared too. Remember a case when Burger king ran ads about how its french fries beat McDonalds in taste tests and the result-...McDonalds actually saw a spike in french fry sales while the king did not….
Now that was interesting eh??
To be continued….>>>>>>>>>
------ Gerard Manley Hopkins
The recent Horlicks – Complan spate has triggered a new row hitherto unseen and unheard in Indian advertising……. Blatant Comparative Advertising.
Comparative advertising, as the name suggests, is advertising where a party (the advertiser) advertises his goods or services by comparing them with the goods or services of another party. Such other party is obviously his competitor and is often the market leader in the business (Horlicks with about 60% and Complan with about 15 %). The comparison is often a desperate attempt to eat into the share of the compared and is characteristically done by either signifying that the advertiser's brand is of the same or a greater quality to that of the compared or by denigrating the quality of the compared product (in the Horlicks vs Complan case both has happened and frankly I am quite confused as to who is saying what and should I stop buying both and go back to age old practices like banana powder and raggi malt).
Now that this ad has evoked the topic, I plan to bring out my gyan on the subject and hammer who ever is bothered to read it. Comparative advertising can be as blatant as the ones that we see now in the Horlicks-Complan who is better and why? war of visuals and words or can even be subdued and suggestive as in case of a Baleno comparing it with the "luxury German cars" on the market. If you rewind a bi,t Captain Cook when it launched had an ad that made a not- so- overt- but -not -so -covert reference to Tata Salt by showing a package that looked exactly like it. As such advertising does not contain any trademarks it is not relevant to the law of trademarks (it may, however, constitute a breach of the code of ethics of the watch dog ASCI who watches and barks but seldom bites).
Comparative advertising as a practice does not have to be limited to the use of the identical trademark, as creative advertisers will often do play of words. It was often used to suggest the brand leader ship that you compare your brand with a brand leader or often an icon but in some other unrelated category. For instance when one writes a copy which says Lotus bawa the BMW in shoes, it is just to show its brand position and not to derive from the brand equity of BMW and for sure not to ridicule or demean it. When Whisper was launched ,again, it was and had to be compared with Carefree listing out the features that the new brand had and the old one didn’t (alas!) but without taking the name of the compared. this left the old one bleeding and the new one absorbing it fully..( the pun is intended)....This again is better off and more acceptable to the compared even though he will grumble but can do nothing more.
If the points in comparison is testable and as long as it is provable it seems the courts have no issues here, and I am told that the Mumbai high court didn’t upheld Complan’s case when Horlicks started the tirade digging at the 23 vital nutrients and all the grow faster claims and bingo they are also here with all the dirty linen on the streets, washed and washed."Dogs have not the power of comparing.A dog will take a small piece of meat as readily as a large, when both are before him” said some one and how true right?? Isnt it a pity that a brand as great as Horlicks has to resort to this scale of gimmickery to sell itself? That but is a different case which we will disscuss in the next episode.
One question I have often heard being asked ( last one week I have heard this many times in the class room)is whether it is "legal" to be doing this…? If it means and generally it means that if you would be in danger of a lawsuit if you ran a comparative ad without asking permission of the other brand….. the attacker can be taken to a court of law if your ad is disparaging, that is if you claim anything about the competitors product (i.e. that your product is cheaper, faster, etc.) and it can not be substantiated in a court of law. One thumb rule is that usually such ads should be done by a reputable agency that uses statistically sound research techniques to make claims (blind taste tests, independent laboratory, etc.) so that the claimant later does not look like a fool falling flat on their face. In extreme cases it can benefit the compared too. Remember a case when Burger king ran ads about how its french fries beat McDonalds in taste tests and the result-...McDonalds actually saw a spike in french fry sales while the king did not….
Now that was interesting eh??
To be continued….>>>>>>>>>
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