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 soft- drink 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. Coca- Cola on the other hand came back with a subtle if not non- direct 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 counters-punches 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.