Brand Wars : Pepsodent Vs Colgate

The August of 2013 saw the beginning of another war in the toothpaste market. Pepsodent, the challenger brand from HUL directly attacked the market leader Colgate with a high profile comparative advertisement. The ads directly compared  Pepsodent Germicheck with Colgate Strong Teeth with claim that Pepsodent Germicheck is 130% better in fighting germs than Colgate Strong Teeth.

Watch the ad here : Pepsodent vs Colgate

While this is not the first time that Pepsodent has frontally attacked Colgate. 

Pepsodent is a small brand compared to Colgate. According to ET, Pepsodent Germicheck has a market share of 6.4% while Colgate strong teeth has a market share of over 29.4%. For a challenger brand like Pepsodent, fighting the leader directly certainly puts the brand in limelight.

In India, brands do engage in such direct attacks. Law does  allow certain level of comparative advertising provided it does not disparage the other brands. Usually the challenged brands take the matter to either ASCI or to the court. But since these take time to settle, the comparative ads may have achieved its objectives.

Most of the time, the challenger brand uses research evidence to support their claims of superiority. In this case, Pepsodent claims that it has 130% more germ attack power than Colgate. The fine print says that Colgate is indexed to 100 %. So is Pepsodent in a sense puffed up the numbers to make it seem extraordinarily superior to Colgate.

It is interesting to note that Pepsodent Germicheck chose to attack Colgate Strong Teeth rather than Colgate Total. Colgate Strong Teeth is the largest brand in the Colgate portfolio but this brand is not claiming any germ killing attribute. Colgate Total is the brand which claims the germ killing attribute. So rather than fighting the Colgate Total, Pepsodent Germicheck decided to launch the attack on Colgate Strong Teeth.

Direct comparative ads, that too against an established market leader most often works for the challenger brand. It has the shock value and the ensuing marketing war gets the challenger brand eyeballs and media spaces especially in social media. Frontal attack using such tactics has its fair share of risks. The market leader often will react with full might which may destroy the challenger brand. In this case , it is the fight between the titans and if there is a war, both will bleed.  

Sunfeast Dark Fantasy : Escape into One

Brand : Dark Fantasy
Company : ITC

Brand Analysis : 529

Sunfeast Dark Fantasy is the story of a brand which started its journey as a sub-brand and later acquired the status of a standalone brand. ITC forayed into the  biscuit market in 2003 and Sunfeast Dark Fantasy was launched in 2005. It was only after four years, that ITC thought of taking the brand to the next level.

Dark Fantasy's success can be attributed to the careful detail with which the brand was built by ITC. ITC took a risk in positioning Dark Fantasy as a premium biscuit brand. The premium space was vacant in the Indian market and marketers was unsure how consumers would react to a premium biscuit offering. 

To do this, Sunfeast tried to build the brand among emotional platform taking on the proposition of   ' Indulgence'. So here is a biscuit which would appeal to your sensuous self and take you through an experience of indulgence. It was a risky proposition and ITC backed the theme through some heavy campaigns. 

The brand had the tagline " Pure Indulgence " when it was launched. The USP was the packaging. Dark Fantasy in a way assured in a new wave of packaging in the biscuit market. The bold use of colors and calligraphy supplemented the brand's positioning as a premium biscuit. Later the tagline was changed to " Escape into One ". Dark Fantasy had twin packaging - there is an outer cardboard box and individual choco fills had wrapper packaging. That gave the brand a premium feel.

Watch the ad here : Dark Fantasy 

Rather than restricting itself as a premium biscuit, Sunfeast Dark Fantasy tried to create a space for itself by launching a new variety called Choco fills. Choco Fills are essentially biscuits with   chocolate filled inside. Although these types of biscuits were available, through smart packaging, Dark Fantasy brought lot of interest into this category. Now choco-fills are very popular that competitors like Parle had to launch a new brand in this category.

Buoyed with the customer response to Choco Fills, Sunfeast has extended this packaging strategy to its Cookie category by launching Delishus brand of cookies.
Dark Fantasy can be termed as a packaging success story. The brand has showcased the power of packaging and its influence in the positioning and brand image. Its not the first time that ITC has leveraged the power of packaging , it had tasted success in the FMCG category with Fiama and Vivel which differentiated  through smart packaging..The success of Dark Fantasy has created a freshness wave in the biscuit category with lot of colors and forms emerging from the leading brands. For consumers, shopping for biscuits is becoming  a delightful experience.  

Hero Maestro : Such a Boy Thing !

Brand : Meastro
Company : Hero Motocorp

Brand Analysis  : # 528


Maestro, launched in early 2012, was Hero Motocorp's answer to its erstwhile partner Honda's market leader offering Activa. After the break-up of the JV, Hero Motocorp wanted to take the fight into Honda's stronghold in the Indian scooter market.

Maestro looks and feels the same as Activa and comes with the same technology . Maestro was launched not as a unisex scooter but explicitly as a masculine scooter. This was probably inspired by the success of Hero Pleasure which was launched as a girl's scooter.

Maestro has the tagline of " Such a boy thing " and the campaign highlights the features that would appeal to young men. It is interesting to see the strategy of Hero to attack Honda's Activa not directly but through two brands - Maestro and Pleasure which are segmented on the basis of gender.

Watch the tvc : Hero Maestro

Priced at par with Activa, Maestro has generated considerable interest in the consumers primarily because of the long waiting period for Activa.  The launch campaign is surprisingly not masculine and Hero doesn't want to push the product as  masculine although the tagline says so. The brand doesn't want to put-off those who want  a scooter which can be used by all members of the family.

Although I started to write about Maestro highlighting its gender based segmentation, a surprising article caught my mind : read it here

In a classic case of Osborne Effect  , the company had already announced that Maestro will be phased out soon . Its ironic that the announcement is done in the same year of Maestro's launch. Customers who bought Maestro has been left dumbfounded  by this announcement. In many forum's like Team BHP, new buyers has expressed their feelings of being cheated . Obviously when products are phased out, new buyers often feels cheated but this is a product which is in the introductory stage and suddenly the company announces that this product is going to be killed soon .

Having said that, Hero Motocorp which had established itself as a reliable and dependable market leader hopefully will not let the customers of this brand stranded without any support.

In this digital era, it is important for brands to hold on to its common sense while sharing information. Over 80%  of prospective automobile buyers search for information in internet before purchases. And the official press release of phasing out of Maestro will not miss the discerning eye and surely a customer is lost. 

And what business sense does it make to launch a product along with the announcement that it will be phased out ? Its not planned obsolescence where products are phased out in a planned manner and after it reaches some stage in the life-cycle. 

Maestro , as reviews say , is a good product that provided some credible alternative to the market leader Activa. But the company itself has digged the grave for Maestro. How sad !

Cobra Deo : The King of Deos

Brand : Cobra Deo
Company : VI-John

Brand Analysis : # 527

Its raining deo brands in the Indian market. 

Another player,same story. 

VI-John which had made a splash in the men's grooming market with its shaving cream and SRK endorsement has launched its deo branded Cobra. 

I wonder whether there is a conspiracy hatched against the market leader Axe. My conspiracy theory is that all the local FMCG marketers together decided that every deo brand that will be launched in the Indian market will have the same positioning of a " female attraction" . At the end of it, consumers will puke at the sight of Axe and Axe-girls. ( pun intended)

Other wise how can every brand is launching with the same hopeless positioning ? Are all targeted males are begging for a product that can attract females ?

Cobra has found its celebrity endorser in Emraan Hashmi. The brand is running its launch campaign with a television commercial which can easily be rated as one of the hopeless ones in recent times.

Watch the ad here : Cobra ad

The ad is too horrible to be analyzed but it has to be noted that its not these brands that should worry, rather Axe ( the reigning market leader) is the brand that should be worrying.

The plethora of brands that is harping on the ' female attraction' is going to wipe Axe out of the market in the coming years. The brand Axe is already facing heat with Fogg deo matching the market share in certain markets.

The new brands  flooding the market with heavy advertising and huge channel margins will be happy with some share of the pie. My assumption is that these brands outsource the entire production and their main task is to market. And whatever little share will more than make-up their costs. 

Axe has tried to counter by launching new copy-cat campaign featuring Ranbir Kapoor. That shows the desperation coupled with laxity of the leader in responding to the competitor threat. 

Cobra was a name better suited for a condom  or an aphrodisiac brand name.The campaign also was made in he same lines. These brands know that the market leader is vulnerable and it is the right time to strike. 

And it is the right time... 

Brand Wars : Sensitive Toothpastes

Indian toothpaste market is worth Rs 6000 crores ( Source Business Line) and growing at 20%. Colgate has been the undisputed market leader in this market.. Competitors has been trying to make a dent in the share through almost every strategy listed in marketing textbooks.

It was an unlikely player- Glaxo Smithkline Beecham (GSK ) which really broke into the stronghold of Colgate. GSK in 2010 brought its global dental care brand Sensodyne into the Indian market. The sensitive toothpaste segment was very small and almost unknown to the larger Indian market. Colgate had presence in that niche with its variant Colgate Sensitive. 

Sensodyne surprised the market by capturing 10% of the segment within 4 months on launch. The heavy awareness campaign made customers take notice of the brand.The campaign featured " Chill Test " where the customers who had sensitive teeth were asked to tryout chilled products after using Sensodyne. The ads were very convincing and prompted many customers to try Sensodyne.Besides the Above-The -Line ( ATL) promotion, GSK also contacted around 15000 dentists to promote Sensodyne ( Source- TOI). In one year, Sensodyne became a 100 crore brand and the Sensitive toothpaste market was growing at more than 45 % p.a.

Colgate being an agile marketer was not keeping quiet . The brand launched another variant Colgate Sensitive Pro-Relief inorder to arrest the growth of the competitor.Both the brands benefited by the growth of the category which has grown to about Rs 500 crore. Sensodyne inched very close to the market-leader and at one point became the leading brand in the sensitive toothpaste category. According to reports, Sensodyne and Colgate Sensitive are now having almost same market share in the category. 

Pepsodent from HUL also got into the fray with its variant Pepsodent Expert.While every brand focused on providing relief from sensitive teeth, Pepsodent differentiated by offering  ' relief and repair'  to the consumer. This move by Pepsodent forced the players to rethink their offerings. In the latest campaign, Sensodyne has added the 'repair' proposition to the brand's positioning thereby achieving points-of-parity with Pepsodent Expert brand. 

Sensodyne success can be seen as the success of a specialist brand's fight with a product-line extension. Consumer's view Sensodyne as an expert in the field and hence the claims are more effective compared to the product-line extensions. However, Colgate and Pepsodent were quick enough to retaliate to the entry of Sensodyne albeit with little success.

The fight in the toothpaste segment became more interesting with the launch of Paradontax by GSK. Another specialist brand against bleeding gums. The war has just began. 

Brand Update : Cadbury Bournville says its "Not So Sweet " but why ?

Cadbury Bournville launched in 2009 created a new market for premium dark chocolate in Indian market. The brand smartly positioned itself as THE premium chocolate with a tagline of " You don't buy a Bournville , you earn it ". The launch and follow up campaign effectively conveyed the positioning.

But the 2013 campaign comes as a shocker. The brand has ditched the " You have to earn it " positioning and took on something very peculiar - the new tagline is " Not so Sweet".

The new tvc is equally intriguing.

 Watch the new tvc here : Bournville tvc

The question is why a brand like Bournville ditch such a powerful positioning statement and replace that with a dud !

Not so sweet !! now everyone knows dark chocolate is not that sweet so in this ad, what exactly the brand is conveying - only the agency and the brand manager knows. I presume that this ad is directly imported from some other market and put in the Indian media without much thought. The ad is totally disconnected with the Indian market and fails to evoke anything in the consumer's mind. At end of it the question remains " What the heck ?

 Saving cost by killing the brand ?

Related brand

Bournville : You have to earn it