From our friend Mayur Misra in India comes an interesting photograph:
Photo: Mayur Misra
As Mayur explains:
I don’t know if you have seen this one but the ad in the attachment is from 2007 of the ad wars between Jet Airways, Kingfisher Airlines and Go Airways in India. The background of the story is this: Jet Airways had changed the colors of its planes and the uniform and its airplanes then. Kingfisher Airlines is its biggest competitor and put the other ad 1-2 days later above the Jet ad. Now here is the smartest one, Go Air put the ad above both the airlines ads. See the series of ads in that context, it’s very funny.
This is not the first time we’ve seen such call-and-response advertising from India. I am guessing this practice exists in the U.S., especially on the local-advertising front, but it is probably rarer.
In an upcoming podcast, we tell the story of an advertising campaign whose message was blunted when the celebrity who appears in the ads was forced to advertise for a rival company (as he is the member of a professional sports team that made a deal with the rival). Remember Michael Jordan and the famous Nike/Reebok Olympic conflict?
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I agree, the top billboard looks extremely fake. Notice the odd pixelation of the GoAir address in the bottom left? That’s what text does when you distort the perspective of a flat image in photoshop at too low of a resolution.
It might have been a real billboard down the road, but I would bet it wasn’t actually above these two.
This is quite a popular forward e-mail in India, however definetely looks like gone under the knife.
An abridged version adds the image of (infamous) Indian railways minister.
Back to the topic of counter advertising, Pepsi and Coke follow the cat and mouse game with Indian cricket team. For example: World cup is sponsered by either one of them and other one then sponsers the individual team players and start; leading to continuing cycle of cornering stars in the lean time and leaving them near big tournaments. Just wondering if this increases the pay checks of team players.
English is commonly spoken in India and most upwardly mobile middle class Indians speak English as well as their Western counterparts. Also – a brand looking to cater to the middle class would rather use English than Hindi or other regional languages, as Indian English is the language of the classes, not masses.
As for the ad – mildly clever, about 2 years old and definitely photoshopped!
If the top billboard isn’t a photoshop, how is it held up? All you can see between it and the billboard below it are the lights for the billboard below it and blank, white sky.
After a quick glance at the topmost sign I noticed something peculiar; It was floating in the air. A more cleaver photoshoper would have placed the topmost sign slightly lower so that the lack of supports would be hidden behind the middle sign.
When it comes to obtaining costumers from their competition, companies are willing to do just anything. In this case, Kingfisher and Go Air have tried to do it with advertisement. They have used this powerful source to place themselves above their competitors; Kingfisher above Jet Airways and Go Air above the rest. In seeking costumers, companies try doing it by showing that they are the most trustworthy and the best among all other options. They have chosen to use advertising because it’s very powerful, especially when it’s so catchy as this. The companies doing this are probably pretty sure that the costs of creating the ads will be outweighed by the benefits from it, which they hope will come from new costumers. They realize it’s important to win over people by establishing a sense of confidence in them and winning their loyalty, because once they’ve chosen your company it’s not very likely they’ll switch to another one. This is because people are most comfortable doing what they have already done and with whichever company they have already done it.
This sequence of ads is very smart. Go Air is trying to say that it has yet maintained its high quality airline. The one I like the most, is KingFisher Airlines. It’s the first advertisement I look at. Moreover, it gives an idea of power, since they made Jet Airways change. I would have never guessed that these ads had to do with the fact that Jet Airways changed their color, planes and uniforms. I thought it was an ad referring to quality. I would like to know how the customers responded to this billboard, and what were its results to the airlines.
I think that putting advertisements on top of one another is not too smart. What I mean is, wouldn’t it be smarter to let 2 companies post their ads on some place, and then the other company posts their ad on a separate place. That way they can gather attention from that place only to themselves, while the other 2 ads are splitting the attention, depending on where they are posted.