Rin chose a wrong way of telling its superiority to the consumer .

Last time I s
aw a direct comparative ad war was between Horlicks and Complan. Horlicks starte
d the direct comparative ad and got a very very aggressive reply from Complan. T
he current status is that Horlicks stopped the comparative ad and Complan is con
tinuing its aggression against Horlicks. It was an unnecessary move from Horlick
s which woke up a laid-back competitor like Complan. I think that in that ad war
, Complan won over Horlicks ( not in sales terms but in share of noise ).
The same thing is going to happen with Rin. It is going to lose this war primari
ly because there was no need for a direct comparison with Tide atleast in the ad
s. . If you observe the ad, 22 seconds of the 30 second ad is dedicated to Tide
alone. That means in around 75% of the time, the ad talks about Tide. Interestin
gly the ad even mentions the USP of Tide as " It has fragrance and has whitening
property". Then the rest of the 8 seconds talks about Rin. So if HUL has blaste
d some 30 lakh in the current promo, 22.5 lakh of it was spent on promoting Tide
. Why should you ever mention your competitor in your ads ???
Watching the ad, one homemaker commented " I never knew Tide and Rin was from th
e same company, otherwise how can they show these two brands together in the sam
e ad ? " .
The current campaign lacks any long term objectives. The brand is chosing a shor
t-term path when the issue was a long-term competitive threat.Instead of spendin
g such money on this crap ad, HUL could have run some serious sales promotional
campaigns which could have prompted consumers to opt for Rin . It could have fil
led the retail outlets with Rin POPs. It could have run retailer campaigns to fi
ll the shelves with Rin rather than Tide. HUL still has a huge distribution reac
h and strength compared to P&G, it could have won the war hands down had it capi
talized on the retailer support alone. If Rin was too worried, it could have bou
ght back Big B as the brand ambassador which could have added punch to the tagli
ne " Chamakte Rahna".
Now the outcome of the ad war will be that HUL will be retrained by ASCII or the
Court from further playing the ad . It means that Rin had adapted an unethical
means against the competitor which will cause an unwarranted blemish on the bran
d reputation. Second outcome is that it will encourage Tide to be more aggressiv
e in the market. Tide now has been officially and publically acknowledged as the
competitor for Rin. Third outcome is that an ad war will start which will benef
it the respective advertising agencies and the media.