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Brand Update : Rin Vs Tide , The Strategy

According to latest news report, the Calcutta High Court has restrained HUL from

airing the controversial campaign against Tide. HUL has been given 72 hours to

comply with the order (Source)

The high decibel comparative ad of Rin generated huge buzz in the market. The

direct comparative campaign evoked mixed reaction across the media. That single

controversial ad generated crores worth of buzz about the brands in question.

The current high profile aggressive stand of Rin has a background story. There was a

proxy war going on between Rin and Tide since December 2009. During December,

P&G launched the low priced variant of Tide branded Tide Naturals. Tide Naturals

was priced significantly lower to the Rin. Tide Naturals was launched at Rs 50 per Kg

, Rs 10 for 200 gms and Rs 20 for400 gms. Rin was priced at Rs 70 per Kg at that

time.

The reduced price of the Tide variant was an immediate threat to Rin. Since Tide

already has an established brand equity, Rin was bound to face the heat. AlthoughHUL had another low priced brand Wheel priced at Rs 32/Kg, Tide was not in the

same category of Wheel.

Rin had to cut the price to resist the market share erosion. As discussed elsewhere in

the blog, HUL was facing a steady erosion in the market share in most of the

categories. In the detergent category itself, the brand faced a market share fall of

2.5% in December 2009. With P&G starting a price war, HUL had to react and it did

by cutting the price of Rin by 30% to Rs 50 per Kg. (Source ) .

HUL also reacted to the Tide Natural's price war in a ' Guerrilla Marketing ' way. It

took P&G to the court regarding the Tide Natural's advertisement. The contention

was that Tide Naturals was giving the impression to the consumers that it contained

natural ingredients like Sandal. The court ordered P&G to modify the campaign and

P&G had to admit that Tide Naturals did not contain any Natural ingredients. (

another example of a brand swaying over to unethical marketing practices).

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While P&G opened a war in the price front, HUL retaliated by opening two war

fronts. One was the direct comparative ad and other through the court order asking

P&G to modify Tide Naturals Ad and to admit that Tide Naturals is not ' Natural'.

I think that it was Rin which won the Round 1 of this war. It generated enough Buzz

about the brand with all the media talking about the campaign. Rin was also able to

neutralize the aggression of P&G to certain extent.

Tide chose not to respond because further fuel to the fight can highlight the fact that

Tide Naturals does not contain any 'Natural Ingredients " which may negatively

affect the brand's standing in the consumer's mind. So it is better to play the role of a

" poor" victim at this point of time.

P&G can celebrate because of the free advertisement it got for Tide Naturals because

of the comparative ad of Rin.

It is interesting to see the academic angle of this concept called Comparative

advertising. From my little digging of information, it was evident that the academic

research is also clueless about the effectiveness of comparative advertising. There are

enough evidence to prove that comparative ads work better than non-comparative

ads and vice versa. So academicians are as clueless as the practitioners in this regard.

According to academic literature, Comparative ads are those ads which involves

directly or indirectly naming competitors in an ad and comparing one or more

attributes in an advertising medium ( Alan T. Shao, Yeqing Bao, and Elizabeth

Gray,Comparative Advertising Effectiveness:A Cross-Cultural Study Journal of

Current Issues and Research in Advertising, Fall 2004)

There are two broad types of comparative ads. One is the Direct comparative ads

which compares the competitor in more than one attribute. The second type is the

Indirect comparative ad which projects the brand as the Leading Brand rather than

comparing on certain attributes.

In the marketing world ( globally) comparative ads are commonly u sed acrosscategories. Some of the relevant observations regarding comparative ads are given

below.

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