The Hindu Business Line : Flight entertainment

With the face of the Indian aviation sector changing rapidly, airline brands are suddenly finding themselves in the middle of a brand war. The country’s two major private carriers Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines are going the Pepsi-Coke way. The competition is no longer restricted to achieving higher passenger loads but has moved on to grabbing eyeballs with billboards. The battleground is set. And what you have is a series of ads and counter ads by the two carriers aimed at each other. In fact, after taking over the reins of Air Deccan, the Vijay Mallya-owned Kingfisher Airlines has roped in the low-cost carrier also into the war. This started a year ago when Jet communicated the change of its livery through billboard ads saying “We have changed”. Kingfisher, through ad agency Equus Red Cell, countered, saying “We made them change”. That started a silent squabble between the two. Though Jet is not known to have reacted to Kingfisher’s counter ads, and would not comment on the issue, industry players see the campaigns as a replay of the cola war between soft drink giants Pepsi and Coca-Cola in the Nineties. However, they believe it will still be a while before the tussle between Kingfisher and Jet matches the scale of the two aerated drink makers.

“The cola war was fantastic, brilliantly crafted, with the ‘Nothing official about it’ slogan becoming an instant hit with the consumers. But this airline war, I feel, is just a private exchange between the two companies and has not taken the magnitude of the ’90s war,” says K. V. Sridhar, National Creative Director, Leo Burnett, Mumbai.

As the Indian aviation industry takes its rivalry to the hoardings, those in the advertising industry are taking a step back to analyse what it really means.

Swapan Seth, CEO, Equus, agrees, as he says, “This attracts a lot of visibility for the brand and creates brand awareness. It is not just plain vanilla advertising but also highly communicative.”

RJ, an insider from the advertising industry, feels that the creative groups in advertising agencies trigger such brand wars and the clients are not responsible for the concepts.

In fact, the new Deccan campaign against Jet was suggested by Seth. “I landed at the Mumbai airport and when I saw the hoarding of Jet ‘Our smile lights up 502 flights to over 52 cities every day’, it was like a carpe diem (seize the day) opportunity! We thought we could have some fun with it and so we came up with ‘We’d rather you smile’,” says the man behind the creation of the new Deccan slogan.

“You see, brands are like living organisms and they need to react to the environment they operate in and this is just an example of that,” he adds.

On the reason for choosing Deccan over Kingfisher for the ad attack, he says that the low-cost carrier has always been associated with being “very serious and no-frills attached, so we felt it would be interesting to present it in a different manner with some smart and clever line,” says Seth.

Vikram Malhotra, Head of Marketing at Kingfisher Airlines, explains it further and says that the company saw it as an opportunity to play up on Deccan’s rebranding. “These are marketing moments that come in the lifecycle of various brands. Deccan is a brand that is evolving and now has the stamp of service of Kingfisher Airlines. Its in-flight and on-ground service standards are improving, and we are making a statement to say that our mission is to put a smile on every guest’s face. There was a good opportunity that presented itself before the campaign and in true Kingfisher style we took it!”

Another question that arises is whether these marketing strategies affect the consumer in any way. Most industry people believe consumers only care for the entertainment value in such ads, and it does not really affect their buying decisions.

Sridhar from Leo Burnett says that while consumers enjoy seeing the underdog taking on the established brand, it hardly affects the actual brand perception.

“The jibe is from one service provider to another and not meant for the consumers. In such ads, it is one marketing director talking to another and it serves as a nice little insider joke.” He adds, though, that it might provide the employees a feel-good factor and act as an incentive to better performance.

Sridhar says that as Jet is a more established brand, it should not “stoop down to react to Kingfisher’s counter ads, but bear it like a big brother”.

However, Equus’ Seth does not see this as just a dialogue between two creative heads. “These ad campaigns are not just communication or digs from one creative director or marketing team to the other; the consumer is very much a part of it as he has fun in the whole exercise.”

While Seth believes a consumer is not a passive recipient of such marketing strategies, he knows that it may or may not influence the actual sales of the product. “We are living in times where the consumer is not a mere spectator; he or she is extremely reactive and is aware of what’s going on. But it does not mean that it will translate into more ticket sales for the airlines. It might or might not, but that’s not the reason why such ad campaigns come into the picture.” He adds that such campaigns are not a part of any pre-planned strategy. “You just react to whatever the moment has to offer!”

The advertising industry remains divided on how it perceives such wars. While Sridhar is all for competitive witty advertisements, which provide some entertainment to customers and ad makers, RJ vehemently opposes it.

“Most of the time it is gimmicky, for the publicity of the agency, and done in very bad taste. A creative agent might think it’s a great concept as it makes for a good laugh. They pitch it and since the client has nothing to lose, it is used. But the agency should realise it is responsible to fulfill certain targets of the client and refrain from such immature acts,” he says.

He adds that “rather than indulge in dogfights”, they should use their creativity to think of intelligent concepts that will benefit the client. “In the long run, such gimmicks can become detrimental to a brand with loyal consumers being put off by it if continued for a long time.”

Sridhar too asks for some responsibility on the part of the agencies in taking such creative liberties. He feels it is all in good spirit as long as an emerging brand takes potshots at an established one and not the other way round.

“When Kingfisher hits out at Jet it is ok, as Jet is a leader in the industry. If a second-best company takes a potshot at a bigger brand, it should be taken in jest as it is trying to say that I can reach there too. The bigger brand should not stoop down and react,” he says.

According to Sridhar, ads are like human relations where it would be okay for the younger brother to make fun of the older one, but the reverse would have the older brother sounding terribly condescending and unfair.

Sridhar has also been part of the well-publicised Coca-Cola and Pepsi war, which played out to the amusement of the consumers. “Pepsi used to repeatedly make fun of Coke ads, very wittily, but Coke, being an international brand, never stooped to react. Coca-Cola is our client and I know it will never do it. If Pepsi becomes an equal rival, then it can do it, but not till it retains the leadership position,” he says.

There have been many instances of such bickering affecting the brand image of a product, with the classic example of Exide and Standard Furukawa batteries, he adds.

Standard Furukawa was a smaller company with Rs 5-10 lakh ad spend, while Exide used to spend Rs 1-1.5 crore. Ultimately, in 1998-99, Exide bought over Furukawa and it created ripples in the industry. When hundreds of Amitabh Bachchan look-alikes spring up, it is a compliment to the star. Similarly, the bigger brand should feel proud of a jibe against it and move on without trying to retaliate, he says.

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