Rin Turns The Tide With It's New Commercial: A Sneak Peek at Comparitive Ad's

You must have seen the Rin [HUL] V/s Tide[P&G] Commercial frequently aired on television these days...

In the Rin ad, the claim is limited to a whiter wash- ‘Tide se kahin behatar safedi de Rin’ (Rin gives better whiteness than Tide), without getting into specific, feature-to-feature comparison. Almost all detergent ads promise a whiter wash – except that they used to refer to ‘ordinary detergents’ leaving the consumer to figure that they are talking about her brand. The only difference here is that a competitor has been named, and shown brazenly. According to this article [In Economic Times]: ‘this claim is based on laboratory tests done through globally accepted protocols in independent third-party laboratories’.

Here's What Advertising Council of India (ASCI) has to say :-

Some of the other popular Comparitive Ad's

Horlicks V/s Complan Advertisement,

Pepsi V/s Thumbs Up Advertisement

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Without solid factual backup, comparative ads only serve to create a ruckus and bring the advertising and the brand(s) into the public eye. It remains to be seen how Tide will react but reports indicate [As per Economic Times] that they may not respond directly.

The ads remain on air with a high frequency for a short period of time, creating a lot of buzz before ASCI or a consumer complaint forces the advertiser to pull the ad off the air. Sometimes it may backfire on the advertiser. It may also repulse a few consumers who don’t like brand bashing preferring for you to speak about your positives rather than the negatives of the competition.

Globally, comparative ads have been around for decades. There’s this classic ad for Penn Tennis Balls from Fallon McElligot which was endearing simply because the comparison was tongue in cheek. And then of course, the ‘Get a Mac’ ads for Apple which take a dig at some of PC’s features and also highlight the positives of Mac OS X. In this light, check out the latest effort from Audi of America. On the back of Car and Driver comparison tests, Audi took on it’s competitors – Lexus, BMW, Mercedes et al.

On the back of another fact – Audi is growing faster than Mercedes, Lexus or BMW – they released another ad, ‘The Spell‘, which again named competing brands directly. The Rin ad, compared to such efforts remains at a claim level. What say?

Source:http://www.lbhat.com/advertising/comparative-advertising-the-debate-is-back/