Competition between companies is an everyday activity, but sometimes the brand war, for example, in advertising, can go so far that pecking becomes mainly a comic.
In Finland, you rarely see advertisements that (at least directly) attack a competitor. Our ads are mainly about highlighting the strengths of a product or brand.
But in the big world, marketing is more brutal, and attempts are made to blackmail competitors in disguise. Listafriikki now presents ten ever-ongoing brand wars, the stories behind them, and examples of even amusing advertising campaigns.
Ferrari vs. Lamborghini
As far back as the 1960s, the Italian luxury car meant only and exclusively Ferrari. Then the otherwise stepped down and annoyed Ferruccio Lamborghini stepped into the picture.
Lamborghini was from a winegrowing family, but he himself was interested in completely different things. He founded a company, Lamborghini Trattori, which manufactured tractors. Because the company was a great success and Lamborghini became a wealthy man, he decided to reward himself with a Ferrari.
However, the driving pleasure was not as expected: the clutch was bad, the car too loud and far too challenging to drive in normal road use. Lamborghini decided to give feedback and suggestions for improvement directly to the highest possible body, Enzo Ferrari. This could not accept constructive criticism and stated that it did not value the comments coming from a “middle-aged tractor manufacturer.”
Ferruccio Lamborghini, for his part, took those comments into his beak. Still, instead of being upset, he decided to do something about it and hired a few engineers for his tractor factory.
In 1963, just four months after Ferrari’s outrageous comment, Lamborghini unveiled the 350 GTV car model (pictured) at the Turin Motor Show.
McDonald’s vs. Burger King
These two fast-food giants have been competing for the same customers since 1953 when Burger King was founded. McDonald’s had already had time to make a foothold a little over a decade at that point. It’s hard even to start guessing what amount each company has spent on marketing undisguisedly directed against a competitor.
When Burger King created the Whopper burger in 1957, McDonald’s responded by launching the BigMac. By then, the brand war was over. Here are a few examples.
Burger King has made a television commercial for the Yankee market in which rival mascot Ronald McDonald clown sneaks into the night's darkness to eat at their restaurant.
In Germany, Burger King undoubtedly bought a priced ad space for the horror film Se's premiere about a child-eating clown. At the end of the film, just before the final lyrics, the text first appeared on the screen: “Teaching a Story: Never Trust a Clown,” and then the Burger King logo.
In the early 2000s, Burger King had big billboards with Whopper crammed into a far too small competitor’s box, and the ads read “Höpsö Whopper, it’s the“ Big ”Mac box.”
In December 2019, Burger King revealed in a marketing video that he had hidden a smaller Big Mac behind his burger in every Whopper ad seen during the year.
McDonald’s has not been left to lick its keys, as in France, for example, the company erected two billboards along the road, one of which was several meters long and included multi-stage driving directions to the nearest Burger King, 258 kilometers away. The second sign had a guide to McDonald’s: drive straight for 5km. The video above has Mäkkär's ad first, followed by a response published by Burger King a week later.
It seems that Burger King's marketing department has won the advertising war with its ingenuity, but the market still seems to be pretty solid in Mäkkär's glove.
Adidas vs. Puma
Image: Wikimedia Commons | Public Domain
The brand war between sports manufacturer Adidas and Puma have started for the same reason as many other meaningful or insignificant battles, namely the family dispute.
In Herzogenaurach's small German town, there was a family of shoemakers in the 1920s, whose two sons, Adolf and Rudolf Dassler, worked together in the Dassler brothers ’shoe factory founded by Adolf, Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik (pictured). However, the brothers' skis crossed.
Gossip about why the brothers quarreled bloodily during World War II has been around for decades. The reason has been allegedly the poor intervals between the wives and, on the other hand, Adolf’s rapprochement with his brother’s wife. Adolf has also been allegedly cursed by Allied forces bombing the city, which Rudolf misunderstood as being targeted at him. In any case, the gap broke when Rudolf became a prisoner of war, and Adolf continued to run the company.
After the war, the brothers set out on different paths: Adolf founded Adidas and Rudolf Puma. The break and the establishment of two new companies divided the entire city, as for a long time even the employees could not or had nothing to do with each other. Today, the situation is no longer flammable. Still, Herzogenaurach is known as the city of twisted necks, as locals have always tended to look at other people’s feet to see which sign the pedestrian is worth. Both Adidas and Puma are still headquartered in the hometown of the Dassler brothers.
As a manufacturer, Adidas is much bigger and more successful. Still, Puma had also had its own moments - especially when the world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt, ran world records one after another in the company’s shoes.
Nike vs. Adidas
Let’s take another sports brand war, with Adidas once again as a party. If Puma hasn’t challenged Adida in the footwear market, U.S.-based Nike has done better. In the entire sports equipment market, Nike is light years ahead of its competitors and has agreements with, for example, the NBA and the NFL, the largest sports series in the United States.
But in the very last few years, Adidas has made a crushingly hard result, especially for footwear, with the launch of old favorite models like Stan Smith and Gazelle with a new pulse.
The shoe war between the two giants really began in 1967, when Nike wanted to give its new running shoe collection the name Aztec. Adidas immediately threatened a lawsuit because they already had a collection called Azteca Gold. So Nike co-founders Bill Bowerman and Phill Knight set up an idea brainstorm and began to think of a suitable name.
A small piece of more distant history between The Aztecs ruled much of present-day Mexico until the early 1520s until troops led by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés destroyed that thriving kingdom.
Back to the 1960s and Nike's meeting room. Outraged by Adidas' intimidation, Bowerman asked his partner, "who was the guy who destroyed the Aztecs?". “Cortés,” replied Knight, to which Bowerman snapped, “Ok, our collection will be called Cortez!”. And so Nike's shoes were named.
Indian airlines
Not only two but three players took part in this billboard competition. In 2007, Indian airlines Fly Kingfisher, GoAir, and Jet Airways entered the classic “our dad is better than your dad” controversy as they stacked billboards on top of other boards.
Jet Airways started innocently by erecting a billboard in Mumbai that read, “We have changed.” To highlight advances in aircraft travel comfort and technology. Fly Kingfisher responded quickly by dragging his own billboard over it that read, “We forced them to change !!”.
or did not want to be left out, but they no longer tossed the third billboard in place but circulated a modified image of their own airline as king of the hill and accompanying text: “We have not changed. We are still the smartest way to fly. ”
The pecking of Jet Airways and Fly Kingfisher didn’t stop there. When Jet Airways launched a whole new route and marketed it on a big billboard, “Fly to New York every day,” Fly Kingfisher’s billboards were ready to respond. They again erected a competitor’s ad near their own counterpart with the words “From here, they have already flown to New York.”, Referring to their own scheduled flights to that city.
Dunkin ’Donuts vs. Starbucks
If you’ve ever done business at Starbucks, then you know how things work: when you go to the counter, needless to say, “one big coffee, please.” The barista has to be told the cup according to the company’s own names. Then coffee is selected from millions of different options, followed by milk from thousands of candidates and finally syrups and other spices on top. It’s a pretty hot situation for a first-timer, by the way! According to the story, if a Yankee goes on a date, it’s worth asking a new acquaintance what this usually tends to be at Starbucks - it reportedly says a lot about the person.
And this leads to the topic through a very long primer.
The complex ordering system has also been exploited by competitors, with Dunkin ’Donuts at the forefront. In the past, coffee chains lived in a meltdown when Starbucks focused on their coffees (although the word coffee is hardly heard there) and Dunkin ’Donut, as the name implies, on donuts and other pastries. As bars and cappuccinos began to enter the latter’s range, the company saw an opportunity to split up part of the Starbucks market. Dunkin ’Donut launched a TV commercial (video above) that was a direct thorn to a competitor -“ We order coffee in English, not frontal! ”. Nonetheless, Starbucks has an unshakable place as the number one coffee chain.
Ford vs. Chevrolet
U.S. automakers Ford and General Motors-based Chevrolet competed with their models from the early 20th century when both companies were established. Whenever another brought a new car to market, an adversary was developing a beat for it.
So when Ford released the legendary Mustang in 1964, Americans waited in water language for what would be revealed in the Chevrolet workshop. The press began calling the muscle car in preparation under the name Panther, even though no official announcement had been made. The name would also differ from Chevrolet’s tradition of naming its car with names beginning with the letter C, such as Corvair and Corvette.
On June 21, 1966, Chevrolet sent a secret invitation to 200 journalists for a press conference. “Set aside 12 noon for an important SEPAW meeting on June 28th. I hope you help scratch the cat—more information coming soon. John L. Cutter - Chevrolet Communications Department - SEPAW Manager, ”read in an enigmatic telegram.
Speculation about what miracle SEPAW really means was hot. The next day, an explanatory telegram arrived: “SEPAW stands for Society for the Eradication of Panthers from the Automobile World.” Apparently, the name of the new car was not even Panther! However, everyone's interest had been aroused by a cryptic telegram.
Chevrolet CEO Pete Estes held a press conference at the announced time where the car model's name was revealed - it was the Camaro. Reporters from all over the country had arrived on the scene, and those unable to nail followed by phone. When Estes was asked what the name meant, he replied, “The Camaro is a small but ruthless animal that eats Mustangs.”.
Airbus vs. Boeing
The collision course between the two aircraft manufacturers began in the 1980s when European Airbus began to share the American Boeing market in its home country.
Decades of disagreement have led to numerous lawsuits and gaps in the World Trade Organization. On the other hand, the desire of both to defeat the worst competitor has made airplanes consistently faster, safer, and also more comfortable for passengers. That something good.
The competition has also taken place through advertising campaigns. However, many airline representatives have said that even the ridiculous mumbling of another company will inevitably turn against the other party as new equipment is acquired.
For example, in 2012, when Boeing introduced its new 737 MAX 8 and 747-8 aircraft, the most important point in marketing and the argument was that they would be significantly cheaper to operate than using similar Airbus models.
Airbus did not remain inactive but published an ad accusing Boeing of exaggerating and spreading false allegations. The headline of the ad read with a big “Why does our competitor stretch the truth?”. However, attention is drawn to the large aircraft of that competitor, the bow of which is extended like Pinocchio's nose.
Apple vs. Microsoft
Apple and Microsoft. The mother of all inter-brand competitions. Companies have been each other’s worst competitors throughout their existence, and it has not been disguised in any way. The relationship between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates was not always the warmest possible, but personal hatred has been voiced by virtually everyone other than the gentlemen themselves. They were out of friends last time, though even the words between the two big personalities were not avoided. Gates even invested $ 150 million in its rival to save it from bankruptcy in 1997.
The mutual competition took both companies forward, even though the beginning of the relationship was stubborn. In 1985, when Microsoft released its new version of Windows, Jobs accused Gates of copying a Macintosh.
In 2017, Gates was asked about the imitation issue that has plagued many quarters for decades. He said that, in fact, they were both guilty of copying, but not from each other, but from Xerox, on whose technology both Apple and Microsoft developed their own products. However, Gates stressed that no IPR infringement had occurred, even though he and jobs had hired important designers and engineers from Xerox.
Jobs, too, had brought the cat to the table years earlier and called Gates a thief in the back room of a conference. In a biography of Jobs written by Walter Isaacson, Gates is said to have responded to the accusation as follows:
“You hear Steve; this can be seen from many angles. In my opinion, we both had a rich neighbor named Xerox, whom I broke into to steal the TV only to find that you had already robbed it. ”
Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi
The cockfight between Coca-Cola and Peps is certainly one of the best-known marketing wars. Soft drink giants compete for advertising rights at major sporting events, hauling the world’s most famous public figures into their own camps, and the race was even taken to outer space when both got their own drinks to be enjoyed by the crew of the space shuttle Challenger in 1985.
The starting shot for the Cola War was a television commercial made by Peps in 1975, in which people blindly tasted chef and Pepsi - the advertiser's product beat its competitors in a taste test.
Since then, no stone has been left untranslated, and the methods have been at least unusual, as the following example shows.
On April 13, 1992, Pepsi launched “Crystal Peps,” a clear version of Pepsi. Test customers had well received it - the cola drink tasted almost the same as normal Pepsi but was decaffeinated and lacked a brown caramel.
Pepsi spent a lot of time and money marketing his novelty, and the results were promising. Until December 1992, Coca-Cola released its own bright coke called “Tab Clear,” a sugar-free and colorless version of Coca-Cola. Only a year later, both Crystal Pepsi and Tab Clear had disappeared from store shelves.
Reason? Tab Clear was specifically made as a kamikaze product as it was designed to fail. Coca-Cola launched an advertising campaign in which it glowed its drink's sugar-free nature and even marketed it as a medical drink. Consumers also combined the features with Peps ’clear cola, which was not a diet version, and that too lost popularity. Sergio Zyman, then marketing director at Coca-Cola, has said bluntly, “Pepsi spent a huge amount of money creating a new brand, and we killed it with our own lousy advertising campaign in just a few months.”
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