Brand Wars : Its out there on the Billboards !!

Rivalry and competition between brands catering to the same set of consumers has been happening since time immemorial. We've see it happen before, the first of this kind came up in the 1980s, and that too between HP and Modi Xerox. It was only a decade later that cola companies - Coke and Pepsi - took the cue to come up with some witty ads battling each other out on the streets (read billboards!). For a quick recall: Pepsi's response to Coke's "Eat Cricket, Sleep Cricket, Drink Cricket" ad was an ad showing two former cricketers eating bats and sleeping with stumps! Then we even had a name for it –it was christened as the “Cola wars”... And now it's back again - only this time it's another product, an altogether different segment and between more than two players !

Three airline majors - Kingfisher Airlines, Jet Airways and Go Air - are fighting it out with their advertising. It all started with Jet putting up a billboard in Mumbai, saying "We've changed". Kingfisher responded by putting up another billboard atop it, saying, "We made them change". A few days later, GoAir came up with one of its own (and at the same spot), saying, "We've not changed. We're still the smartest way to fly."

And that's not all. As if working on the series, Jet came up with another billboard which said, "Fly to New York daily". Kingfisher countered it with "They've flown to New York from here."

What we are seeing could be the result of Jet buying Sahara and Kingfisher responding to it aggressively. Healthy competition is one thing but this is a scathing attack,a serious case of mud slinging (read hitting below the belt) .However unfair it may seem on the face but still the fact of the matter is that its fun to watch the brands fight it out inside the ring and outside too ;-)

P.S : This story was making rounds that the Go Air Billboard was never really put up,and that the print ad being circulated on the web was actually made using photoshop,it even seems so after looking at the Go Air billboard(clearly theres a change in the shading).