AD WARS

Tag line: Khao Bina Taarikh Dekhe Client: Nestle India Brand: Munch Creative Agency: JWT Creative Director: Anuja Chauhan Duration: 20 secs Year: 2009 http://www.theadtube.com/articles/tag/comparative-advertising/

Story: After the popular ambush marketing by PepsiCo & Coca-Cola India, chocolate majors Cadbury India & Nestle India can be seen at loggerheads in the ad mad world. In most cases it is the small brother taking on the big brother. Likewise, in this spoof, Nestle Munch has challenged CDMs (Cadbury Dairy Milk) campaign Aaj pehli tarikh hai with its tagline Sirf pehli tarikh ko nahin, kabhi bhi kha sakte hai. Message: With the tag line Khao Bina Tarikh Dekhe, Nestles combative advertising campaign directly mocks Cadburys brand proposition. With this ad, Nestle India wants to dilute the brand proposition of Cadbury, tickling its viewers & stealing the sweetness from Dairy Milk. Munch is a vibrant brand with a personality that is clearly associated with fun. Its advertising has always highlighted the fun in consumption. This ad is to take that message further down. (***) Insight: Consumers are still fairly basic & in todays world of complicated lives we all like to witness some free action sequences. Going by its popularity, its clear that consumers enjoy collisions, thrive on simple skirmishes & thus absolutely love the war between brands or celebrities. (****)

Goof In The Spoof: The easiest thing to do is to criticize intelligent ideas (seriously). But Munchs attempt has fallen flat & there isnt really much to counter the Cadbury campaign, which has proved to be clutter breaking. So before taking head on Punga with CDMs high-voltage campaign, Munch should have considered that spoofs are about puncturing any pretence, but then the brand character has to be such. Thats certainly not the case with Nestl Munch. Unlike Sprite, its not in the brands natural scheme. In other words, this ad war is unlikely to go on forever.

Freshness: The Pehli Tarikh campaign is an easy prey, having focused too sharply on the pay day insight makes it vulnerable. But Munch has wasted a big opportunity to counter it by producing a sloppy spoof. The Munch ad, in this case, looks like a poor mimic of something that stands strong already. Actually the ad language is very edgybuzzy that excites the youth but the script is poor & the cast even poorer. How could this ad dent the buzz that the Cadbury campaign created amongst consumers? (**)

Verdict: Spoofing, if not executed well, runs the risk of reminding the consumer of the original brand. In this case, it seems to have done just that. But spoofs do make brands come alive which havent been able to make much of an impact; they make the whole category much more alive & bring more consumers to it. This advert has certainly livened up the chocolate category.