Rivalry holds an immortal position in every page of history. From death battles of emperors in ancient days to drawing-room disputes for a Barcelona vs Real Madrid match in present days, conflict or rivalry is witnessed everywhere. The business world is not an exception rather in some cases, it has shown how creatively brand rivalry can be done. In a cut-throat competition, the old knight guards his position and a challenger comes to take over the place. International brands, local brands and even local vendors have witnessed this competition at a point in the business cycle. We do not even need to go too far because the burning battle between two Bangladeshi MFS service provider is not a forgotten story to us. So, let’s hover over some hilarious brand wars now from both local and international aspect.
Nagad vs Bkash:
February of 2021 hyped the social media with the ongoing cold war between two leading money supply service provider. It started when Nagad directly poked the current market leader, Bkash, with an advertisement that targets the issue of Bkash charging a high rate from customers. After that Bkash like a big brother of the family decided to give a thoughtful but serious reply with their ambushed marketing content on the 21st of February. But Nagad kept mocking Bkash for their new feature ‘Priyo number’ with another ad. Nagad later filed against unknown people who were trying to spread propaganda about them. However, the fire was distinguished as government authority pull in the aggressive rivalry.
Chillox vs Takeout:
As it is already mentioned that brand rivalry is witnessed in every corner, why shouldn’t we take a look at Dhanmondi restaurants? In 2018, a fast-food restaurant in Dhaka city, Takeout bashed some of its competitors like Chillox and Takeout 2.0 in one of their video posted on social media claiming when ‘you think of a burger, you think of Takeout’. Chillox took it seriously and came up with a counter video. Amidst this fight, Madchef created another content saying they are too good to compare.
Audi vs BMW:
Dear car fanatics, fasten your belt! Because the brand war we are going to talk about may interest you. We are talking about the war that started from the road of Los Angeles in 2013 when Audi placed a billboard directly targeting BMW’s chess tournament. That billboard said “Your move, BMW” and as expected BMW came with a bold reply, “Checkmate”. It didn’t take much time to drag the fight on social media and fans of both brands went ahead making more photoshopped billboards. By this time, Audi returned with another billboard saying “Your pawn is no match for our king”. However, BMW moved the billboard to another road and the billboard war ended there.
Jaguar vs German Cars:
Talking about cars, another advertisement war worth mentioning that involved the four biggest luxury car brands. Jaguar never fears to take bold steps when it comes to directly target competitors. They telecast an advertisement where three German brands Mercedes-Benz, Audi and BMW are represented as German Shepard dog breed and ‘Jaguar’ is a Jaguar. Mercedes-Benz released an advertisement which says a Mercedes is flexible like a chick and Jaguar having the motto “#It’s_good_to_be_bad” replied with another ad showing Jaguar can just eat the chick.
Coke vs Pepsi:
You were probably waiting to see these, right? And why not, whenever think of brand competition, the names that come to our mind are Coke and Pepsi. These two brands were top competitors from the very beginning. Coca-cola always leads the cola market but PepsiCo has done well with diversified snacks. However, they laid their cards on the table for the first time in the ’70s when Pepsi started the Pepsi challenge, a blindfold game where people get to taste Pepsi and Coca-cola, then choose based on taste. Pepsi won the first battle as many people expressed that Pepsi tastes better. This challenge led Coca-cola to launch the New Coke with a new flavour and logo. But new coke had to face a backlash as most of the customers despised the taste and urged to go back to the previous flavour. Coca-cola however compelled to go back to the original taste. Coke rebranded with a polar bear and Santa logo to emphasize family and tradition. Later on, they launched the ‘share a coke’ campaign and had won over Pepsi. So, are you a Coke person or Pepsi person?
Mac vs Microsoft:
The first attack came from Mac when they launched the “I am a Mac” ad as a part of their ‘Get a mac’ campaign. In that ad, mac is represented by a young, friendly, smart man and PC is represented by an older one depicting Windows. In the ad, Mac depicts that it is fast, do better life stuff and handy. This ‘I am mac’ series has 66 ads. Microsoft successfully replied to that with their noteworthy “I am PC and I am not alone” ad showing that people with all background and demography uses Microsoft. Though Mac ended that series but Microsoft continued with Siri vs Cortana and tabs.
Now the question arises, is this aggressive marketing good for the brands? Well, that depends on which side of the table the brand belongs to. Usually, newer brands target the market leaders to take over the place. Newer or inferior brands can get some advantages from it. First of all, the brand gets the limelight. Though there are some rules and regulations to limit rivalry, before implementing these, brands get enough attention, the same happened in the case of Nagad. Secondly, under-dog brands can attain sympathy and attention from the customers for their performance as a comparatively smaller brand, for instance, Pepsi successfully grabbed the attention with its taste. But the challengers always have to give off something and here it is providing attention to the other brand. This is obvious that the leader brand won’t start the fight as it will diverse attention toward the other brands. Moreover, it gives a chance to competitors to improve themselves. Due to some inconvenient services, Bkash had to face the music from the public and came up with some changes, this happened because of the turbulence created by Nagad. However, this revolutionary marketing strategy introduced some creative moves in the industry indeed.
