Chocolate Spoof- Advertising will generate more PR
By Ganapathy Viswanathan on Sep 10, 2009 in advertising
In the past it was always the cola war between Pepsi and Coke. I never understood who finally won the battle and whose sales or saliency went up in the consumers mind. The trend continued in the cola space for quite some time but I have not off late noticed that kind of campaigns being released. May be both of them realized that it is sheer waste of money. Is there not a learning for other categories from this? But recently I happen to see Nestle trying a spoof on CDM, which is splashed across all channels in the electronic medium. Post the campaign, we saw more write ups on various portals on who is right and who is wrong and who is getting benefited.
Such kind of strategy is very short term and in the end the winner is likely to be the brand leader. If you have great value proposition for your brand, why not highlight it instead of trying a backdoor entry to fight your enemy. To me spoof campaign is like a Lion attacking an Elephant from behind and not fighting head on. The other drawback of fighting your enemy in this fashion is diluting the equity of the brand and eroding market share as you cannot overnight shift brand loyalist with such tactical campaigns.
You can debate through PR and write ups on who is right and who is wrong but to me the victim is not the brand leader. Normally spoof campaigns are tactically used to arrest the growth of its closest competitor when two big brands rule the market. If you are not close to your market leader this is sheer waste of creative energy and money.
To conclude Spoof advertising will only help the brand leader with FREE PR.
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On Sep 10, 2009, Vikram said:
Such type of advertising gimmicks are widely seen in the West where cola brands, auto majors do it widely.. in different aspects… The sole purpose is to proclaim superiority and appeal to the general audience and the target segment.. One basic fact being overlooked in such tactics is the evolution of the consumer segment and the level of awareness present and constantly increasing due to discussions and opinions.. In the end the only true benefactors remain the one who have already demarcated their consumer segments and cater to them irrelevant of the marketing tactics..
On Sep 11, 2009, Ruchi said:
I completely agree with the above.. but the question is why does someone like nestle go in for a cheap gimmick like this? “mera munch mahaan” could be lived up to without letting cadbury down, but maybe this is what advertising is turning in to.
On Sep 11, 2009, simran said:
cadburdy is on a different brand positiong altogether..they have been trying hard to get into the mindset of the adults…dont know how succesull it is this time..but all these spoofs are surely entertaining especially the sprite ads
On Oct 1, 2009, visit hallucinating sapiences said:
wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it is a very nice topic i am agree with the above the sole purpose is to proclaim and apple to the gernal audience i like it this topic=========
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On Oct 27, 2009, Ankur C said:
I agree with what you’re saying. The question in my mind is- What effect does this fashion of advertising have on the companies looking to be identified as the leader?
On Sep 10, 2009, palinn said:
RT @IndiaPRBlog Chocolate Spoof- Advertising will generate more PR http://bit.ly/XrjQK
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
On Sep 11, 2009, jodykoehler said:
Chocolate Spoof- Advertising will generate more PR http://bit.ly/AWdqH
This comment was originally posted on Twitter