COMPARATIVE ADVERTISING: IS IT REALLY COMPARING?

Our Group presented on the topic brand wars: Rin v/s  Tide. We had presented a talk show on the topic. All of the students were amazed to see the advertisement where Rin have literally attacked  the Tide naturals in every aspects such as appearance, name even the tag line also. but may I remind you friends, this is not the first time that two products are 'openly compared'. There is a lot of examples in the past like Complan -Horlicks, Audi - BMW etc... When we search for more details we found that as per ASCII laws comparing advertising is legal when it is clear what aspects of the advertiser's are being compared with that aspects of the competitors product and when the comparisons are factual, accurate and capable of substantiation. In this case when we observe closely we can see that in the bottom of the screen they have written that tested in a third party lab. But when you see the advt: you can also understand that there is only the comparison with figures, no statistical figures. We have to see the circumstances in which this ad comes out. Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) is desperate to downsize the competitor that is the international giant P&G because now tide has got more share than the Rin. Actually this advertisement is only a follow up of a series of incidents. At first P&G came up with an advertisement of it's new product tide naturals. They argued in the advertisement that the detergent only includes natural ingredients. HUL gave a complaint in the court against the statement of natural ingredient and extra whiteness. This controversial ad came right after the verdict of the court in favor of the HUL. Now P&G has moved in the same way and filed a case against the HUL. as a result court has banned the controversial advt: but HUL ad has attracted so much of public attention because it was launched on a weekend and they got 2 days of time to show it repeatedly. This shows the clear intention of HUL to only attract the customers towards the product. But according to the view of my group the ad concentrated more on the competitors product than on their product. In the 30 second ad 22 seconds are spend to show about the Tide natural. At the end of our group presentation the question which arises is that whether the advertising was really comparative or dominating? Answer will be different from each person. But we can conclude by saying that the comparative advertising is good only if it give some information to the people otherwise it is only a play for attraction.