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Brand Wars
W e
take it for granted that marketing is warfare. We don’t think
twice about the war-room vocabulary we employ –from ‘targeting,’
strategic planning, and phrases such as the ‘cola wars’ and
‘guerilla marketing’.
It’s always been that
way, you say. But things have got worse. It has been barely six
months since this column observed the lifting of the recession in
the U.S. marked by head-to-head product wars in categories as
different as razor blades and ‘erectile dysfunction!’
Now it’s getting
downright dirty, and I’m not even referring to the terribly negative
presidential campaign. Case in point, the full-frontal war between
Anheuser Bush and SAB Miller, the makers of Budweiser and Miller
Lite, respectively.
It all began when Miller
decided to make fun of Bud, the ‘King of Beers,’ by appointing
itself the ‘President Of Beers.’ Most people, including marketers,
dismissed this as a typical election-season stunt, with the upstart
trying to unseat the incumbent and all that. But there is a price to
pay when one throws punches at the brand leader. Bud shot back with
the accusation that Miller was owned by a South African brewery,
implying that the head of state surely couldn’t be a foreigner? (In
India, they’re probably calling that plagiarism!)
Things heated up as Bud
continued to pour on the insults, sissyfying Miller Lite as the
‘Queen of Carbs.’ (As you may know, the low-carbohydrate dietary
obsession has made ‘carbs’ the dirty word in the food and beverage
industry.) These were full-page ads in national dailies, and TV
spots. Miller, retorted with a lawsuit, saying the ‘queen of carbs’
and Miller’s South African pedigree references were untrue. In
actual fact, Miller Lite does have less carbohydrates that
Budweiser. So the court rapped Bud on the knuckles, and ordered them
not to refer to the South African connection. But they continue to
chatter about the ‘foreign brewery’ connection in TV ads featuring
talking lizards.
You are probably
wondering what’s the point of all this, and what has any of this got
to do with marketing –assuming marketing is all about increasing
sales? My thoughts exactly. “Slowly, without anyone looking, a
hallmark of modern advertising for the past 50 years has all but
disappeared: The Idea,” commented Randall Rosenthall of Advertising
Age. He was referring to the margin-obsessed Advertising
conglomerates that resort to techniques, over ideas. He wasn’t
commenting about talking lizards, per se, but we can all recognize
when big ideas are replaced by clever little tricks.
More
specifically, marketers are so busy
taking pot-shots at the competition that they spend inadequate
resources defining why they are better or different, or important to
you and me. They may be margin-obsessed, but seem to have plenty of
money for lawsuits.
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Take the other silly
spat between the singles Web sites
Match.com and
True.com that
erupted in a full page attack in the Wall Street Journal in June
this year. It took the form of an ad pretending to be a ‘letter’
where Herb West, the president of True.com writes to his
counterpart, Barry Diller of Match.com/
“Mr. Diller, I will
not allow you to intimidate employees of TrueBeginnings. To get
to them, you must, first, come through me. I will meet your
challenges in the court room, if you insist; however I propose a
more productive solution. I invite you, Mr. Diller to compete
on the field of free, open, and fair competition…”
A court-room brawl,
AND a challenge to a gunfight at O.K. Corral? Leaping lizards! A
more productive solution would have been to send a real letter
to the said Mr. Diller, using a thirty-five cents stamp, instead
of making a public show of this.
And while we are on
the subject of court room battles and cowboys, here’s a third
case in point. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration has rebuked
GlaxoSmithKline for “false or misleading” advertising on TV. The
product in question is an antidepressant called Paxil. The Paxil
ad used a technique in a TV commercial where people were seen
wearing name tags that describe them with words such as “self
conscious” and “nervous.” Paxil is seen as the answer. The
problem is, nervousness and self-consciousness are not in the
same class of ‘anxiety disorders’ for which the drug is
approved. Medical conditions such as post-traumatic stress
disorder and anxiety disorder are serious stuff; being nervous
or shy doesn’t require a powerful drug like Paxil.
It gets worse, and
this is where that infamous ‘court of public opinion’ meets the
court of law to deliver a one-two punch. Glaxo, the world’s
second largest drug maker, lost a class action lawsuit because
of the drug’s link to suicide. There is a cottage industry of
law firms on the Web (such as this one on the Web
http://www.paxil-side-effects-lawsuits.com/) that advertise
“If you or someone you know has been prescribed Paxil and have
suffered dangerous side effects, violence, suicide or attempted
suicide, you may be entitled to compensation.”
The last time
customers waged war on a company, and vice versa, it wasn’t
pretty. Many tobacco companies were maimed or wounded, but we
all recall how they initially duked it out because it seemed
like the ‘marketing’ thing to do. If history is any guide,
marketers need to return to what really matters: Big ideas.
The moral of these
stories? It is no different from what your mother once told you:
If you don’t have anything nice to say in the marketplace, don’t
say it. Ignore her advice someone could get hurt. |
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