Brand Wars
By Aharon Jana
Contents
• Introduction
• What do we mean by brand wars?
• Coca cola vs. Pepsi
• Billboard War Between BMW & Audi
• P&G vs. Hindustan Unilever
• Conclusion
Introduction
Brands are the most valuable assets of most corporations, but they are
intangible. They exist only in people’s mind. The average mind contains
10,000 brands. But only e few hundred make it people’s long term
memory, maximum of 2 brands per category. Managing intangible
assets is the future of competition. 75% of purchasing decisions are
based on emotions. Neuroresearch shows that people are more likely
to buy something they identify than something that is better for them.
Brands are about creating dreams that make people take action.
Numbers of brands on US grocery shelves in 1991: 15,000 brands. In
2010: 45,000.
What do we mean by brand wars?
Imagine a situation where two
school going kids are having
competition to score well in
exams and excel from each
other. Brand wars is basically
what is sounds like. It's the
competition between two or
more different brands. For
example between the Coca-cola
and Pepsi, Magticom, Geocell
and Beeline, Audi and BMW and
so on. Both brands are trying to
show to the public why their
product is better than the other,
through things like advertising.
Coca cola vs. Pepsi
• Perhaps the most famous
brand battle of the last century
is Coke against Pepsi, also
know as "The Cola Wars." It's
still going on to this very day,
and neither side will ever let
their guard down. They can't
afford to. But it wasn't always
a battle of giants.
The war between the two softdrink giants started with the
Pepsi Challenge back in the
70s, where people are asked to
take a sip and decide which is
a better cola between Coke
and Pepsi.
Of course being a Pepsi
Challenge, Pepsi declared
themselves as the winner since
people back then want their
soft drinks to be sweeter. CocaCola on the other hand came
back with a subtle if not nondirect attack to Pepsi with the
launch of “Coke” which boasts
that it tastes better than before
but this was sadly halted since
people preferred the original
taste of Coca-Cola.
Billboard War Between
BMW & Audi
• Things are much more interesting in the automobile world. Car
companies such as BMW, Audi, Mercedes and the likes have been
seen trying to out-stage each other. Whether in billboards or in
magazines these car magnates produced some of the most creative
and hilarious one line taunts against the competing companies. One
of the most famous battles was between Audi and BMW which all
started in a simple billboard in Los Angeles C.A.
• It all started with this innocent ad …..
and was later changed into…
and BMW’s response was…
Audi turned onto its fan-base in Facebook and asked its fans to come
up with a witty comeback to answer BMW’s counter. The fan’s
responses were amusing at its best. Some of the hilarious counterspunches are:
And then…
Just when everyone taught that the war is over Audi gave the
eager followers of the billboard war a new piece to talk about:
but as soon as Audi’s
latest rebuttal came
out BMW was quick to
respond with
something mightier
than a billboard and
as it turns out BMW
tied a blimp to Audi’s
billboard.
P&G vs. Hindustan Unilever
The rivalry between Hindustan Unilever and
Proctor & Gamble is not a mystery. While
P&G is re‐launching Pantene claiming to be
the number one brand, HUL has already
taken a first action by placing ads that say
‘Dove is the No.1 shampoo.’
In the last one year, Panteneʹs market share
has gone down by 60 basis points, and
HULʹs Dove has gained over 130 basis
points during the same period. So, P&G is
now trying to regain the lost ground and
market leader HUL is not in the mood to
give away any of their market share. Thus
comes out an aggressive marketing
campaign.
Conclusion:
Besides that experts say comparative advertising at times
hurts the entire product segment, in fact, research shows that
consumers don’t necessarily like comparative ads where a
brand directly attacks its rivals. Their argument: If a brand is in
the public eye, it better be for a good reason. If brands make
allegations about products, then they will not only hurt their
rival, they might end up hurting the entire product category.
However, “Every coin has two sides”, similarly comparative
advertisements are important and beneficial from the
consumer’s and producer’s point of view only to the extent it
is providing information about the product and making them
aware. On the other hand comparative advertisements are
not beneficial if advertisers comparisons are false &
misleading.