Pepsodent has picked up the cudgels and shot directly at rival Colgate in a recent campaign. Malay Desai takes a cheeky look at what others can do.
The last long weekend, India woke up to a daring punch delivered from under the front page folds of popular newspapers. It came from Pepsodent, the middleweight player of the Rs 5,000 crore plus toothpaste market and it was aimed at heavyweight Colgate, which has been dominating the ring since years.
The blow was quite in the face – Pepsodent claiming itself to be ‘130 per cent behtar’ and positioning Colgate’s logo over a melancholic child holding his jaw. And in case you missed this while wrapping Eid fare in the newspaper, the campaign might have got you through a TV commercial or through social media where reactions were plenty.
Now the authoritative media mag that we are, we could either list the recent history of comparative advertising and analyse this campaign to tell you stuff you already know. Or, we could do this:
Dig up the dirt
Everybody loves a good fight. So we’re suggesting you industry-wallahs (and your lawyers of course) to pick up your shovels, dig deep into each others’ shortcomings and misgivings and begin washing dirty linen in public. We’re sick of comparative advertising of the maha-mundane type where a splitscreen shows germ build-up with swiggly animated worms. You know you could do better – and we’re not only addressing toothpaste marketers here.
Take for instance the telecom brands. So much could’ve been done by rival networks with Vodafone’s pug campaign. Show the boy sticking a ‘missing dog’ poster, show the pug wearing a ‘happy to help’ sign with an added line – ‘but pay your wrongly calculated bill first’. Vodafone could then come back with a ‘Har ek call drop zaroori hota hai’ jingle to poke Airtel. And Reliance could bear the worst – jibes on its over-charging, pathetic customer service et al. (Note how the writer here vents frustration over his network.)
Even soaps could take a break from their uber-repetitive actresses-playing-with-foam route. Show a Kareena Kapoor lookalike walking out of the bath-tub from the Lux set and walking into The Body Shop. Or a Salman Khan (of the ‘Naya Wheel’ fame) running around white bed-sheets… in jail. Sly is fun, nasty is funnier.
Didn’t we sit back and enjoy the sarcasm war last year between The Times of India and The Hindu? We distinctly remember Hindu (it always works if it’s a challenger beginning the war) taking digs at TOI by saying ‘We have Page 1,2,4,5.. too’ in an obvious reference to the latter’s ‘page 3’ culture. The commercial taking this forward was as entertaining.
With the number of printed publications our shelves have (and the number that’s fighting to survive), it’s surprising why more newspaper and magazine brands don’t indulge in witty banter if not anything else. (CC – Management)
Only the colas are doing it perhaps. Aren’t those phases delicious to watch when Pepsi takes on Thums Up (they showed an Akshay lookalike sucking his thumb in hospital, 2008) and Coke hits back but through a Sprite commercial (one in 2010 where they dubbed ‘youngistan’ as ‘junglistaan’.) And all this when they both know that all it takes for their customers to ditch loyalties is the restaurant anna asking ‘X’ nahi hai, Y chalega? But cola wars are always amusing, push viewers to think (only brave or stupid Indian advertisers indulge in that mission) and most of all, finally give certain magazines something relevant to write about.
If netas can do it
An unexpected quarter where learnings can come on this subject is our Parliament. If you, dear marketer, watch DD Lok Sabha every day or follow our esteemed politicians who’re Doctorates in Mud-Slinging, you will learn invaluable lessons in digging dirt, poking, making measured noise and eventually bringing down the competitor over a non-issue.
It shows in their pre-election campaigns too. We were truly impressed by Congress’ Gujarat 2012 campaign which exposed many gaping holes in Modi’s governance. Come General Elections 2014, the lengths to which comparative advertising of the political kind will go would spare nobody.
And talking of impressive take-down campaigns, you should recall Samsung’s superb ‘Next Big Thing’ spot on Apple’s fanboys waiting outside a store for the next iPhone. It happened in 2012, and just last week, Samsung’s Chief Marketing Officer has said these mocking ads proved to be a tipping point for the brand’s standing in consumer electronics. Basically, he means they helped them get rich.
All we’re saying is give war a chance.
