The unexpurgated version of my comments is as follows:
"The bell rings in a court of law. With the Judge presiding, and the clerk of the court announces: “Ladies and gentlemen! In the blue corner – RIN! In the green corner – TIDE!” The heavyweight companies and their equally heavyweight team of legal advisors settle down for a long, comfortable and profitable (for the legal advisors) lawsuit, while marketing and advertising professionals mull over the recent RIN ad.
Comparative advertising has been with us for a long time, and long may it continue. Such advertising is a perfectly legitimate way to communicate superiority of features and benefits, better effectiveness, and other elements over the competition. It is not even necessary to mention the competitor brand by name; many years ago, Captain Cook, during its launch period, used an advertisement that made a covert reference to Tata Salt by showing a package that looked exactly like it.
Comparative advertising is effective only when the company concentrates on unassailable and meaningful points of difference. The demonstration of such points of difference creates strong credibility for the advertised brand, and that is why I have used the word "only" in the previous sentence.
Comparison advertising gets tricky, and ethically highly questionable, when the issues aren't quite as matter of fact.
The ASCI Code of Conduct specifies in CHAPTER-I of the Code:
"To ensure the Truthfulness and Honesty of Representations and Claims made by Advertisements and to Safeguard against misleading Advertisements
1. Advertisements must be truthful. All descriptions, claims and comparisons which relate to matters of objectively ascertainable fact should be capable of substantiation. Advertisers and advertising agencies are required to produce such substantiation as and when called upon to do so by The Advertising Standards Council of India.
2. Where advertising claims are expressly stated to be based on or supported by independent research or assessment, the source and date of this should be indicated in the advertisement."
And therein lies the rub.
Is the Rin ad truthful? Is it claim substantiated, and can it indeed be substantiated?
There is the little super in the RIN vs Tide ad which reads "As tested by independent lab." Which lab? What are its credentials? Is it really independent? What were the test protocols? Are these beyond reproach? When was the research conducted? What were the findings? Are these findings in the public domain?
The above questions remain unanswered at this point in time. Would the lack of such answers, at this point in time, indicate a deliberate attempt to mislead the consumer?
Consumers are entitled to the truth, and any attempt to short-change them is morally unacceptable, and is pretty bad business practice anyway."
Thereafter, suits and countersuits followed.
And then HUL went one better with their Rin one crore challenge. The ad uses one of the hoariest strategies around - "buy me because I work better and I shall demonstrate" - and this strategy works, so that's great. But the Rs 1 crore challenge tagged on at the end is pure tomfoolery. It's a great idea to convince the customer that your product works better than competition, but it's a wildly desperate strategy when a brand asks consumer to prove that its claim is wrong. Hopefully, housewives nowadays are a whole lot smarter than in the past.
Rin has a long and successful history behind it, so this smacks of a team totally bereft of ideas on how to tackle competition. It appears that the brand team has really taken to heart the line from the Hero Honda ad ("Thinking is such a waste of time").
