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Some label it ethical & cool, while many use adjectives like outrageous & unethical to explain this shift. what’s with this new trend of combative and in-your-face name-calling? a check-out.
In the beginning came innocence. The grass was green, the sky was blue and God above sat smiling at his blissfully contented creations… man, beast, nature, products. But over time, frown-lines replaced the divine smile, and the pleasant sounds gave way to cacophony! Life below was getting complicated at a fast pace, and peace was fast becoming a word of the past, as more and more mortals were earning the ‘consumer’ tag! Worse, for sellers, the tool of ‘slander’ remained the only one to project their offerings in a better light that their counterparts’; and thus comparative advertising was born.
The basic thrust of this genre was to highlight product differentiations in an exciting, entertaining and imaginative manner, designed to impact the prospect’s mindset (no matter how marginally) towards a shift in perspective, triggering-off a purchase intent. Today, champions of this mode of advertising believe that differentiation is indeed the foundation of good marketing and compelling differentiation, the hallmark of a great brand. But when eccentricity seeps in, it becomes a double-edged sword. Why? Because, it tends to undermine both, the confidence and appeal of the brand in question – so handle with care!
Critics however lambast this form of communication, branding it a pathetic example of poorly done advertising, symptomatic of “lazy creativity and lazy creative thinking. If it is blindly pursued, it only goes to prove that the company wanted to make its way round the process of seeking unique consumer insights, the foundation of a great brand idea and a solid consumer proposition. Finally’ in these silly, childish, exhibitionistic skirmishes played out in full public glare, one tends to forget who started the spat, who ended it and what the fight was all about! Besides, in these sensation-seeking times, public memory is woefully short and before long, it only becomes the next big “tamasha”!
Ad-watchers believe that this genre really took shape and impacted popular imagination with the well-recalled Coke v/s Pepsi face-off in US, during the 1970s. The audacious and hugely innovative Pepsi, achieved a startling breakthrough in the world of comparative advertising, when it had the guts to re-position the much-loved, iconic and established family beverage Coke as “My Father’s drink” and Pepsi as “The choice of youth…a new generation! Years later, Pepsi India threw a credible punch back at Coke, welcoming Coke to India in a masterstroke of a creative line: “Coke & Coca-cola are trademarks of the Coca-Cola Company. Pepsi is the choice of a new generation!” Point taken.
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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2010.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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