Comparative Advertising - AD Wars by Amul

"AMUL"  one of the most loved brands in India is known for its innovative and cheeky advertisements which makes everyone go aww. But a recent comparative advertisement which it released on print and social media caused a small AD war.

So what is this comparative advertising?

According to Investopedia Comparative advertising is a marketing strategy in which a company's product or service is presented as superior when compared to a competitor's. A comparative advertising campaign may involve printing a side-by-side comparison of the features of a company's products next to those of its competitor. 

This advertisement is what caused it all

A simple innocent looking question

 "Does your butter cookie contain butter or vegetable oil?"

You can read the original tweet by clicking on this link.

  This created a lot of interaction online and many started posting their own content of different brands of biscuits and complained.

Every brand of biscuit which claimed as butter cookie was dragged in by the consumers, this was further enhanced by the contest which was titled as #AmulButterCookie challenge which made people tweet out with comparative images.

This is not the first time when Amul has done comparative advertising; it has earlier done it for its ice-cream range, where it asked whether you are having ice-cream or frozen dessert. It was taking advantage of a regulatory rule which listed products made from vegetable oil as frozen dessert. 

Not only Amul but Havmor icecreams also sent out a cheeky ad targeting frozen desserts.

HUL was not humoured and it approached the courts and argued the advertisement was disparaging its product and got an injunction against the advertisement which it prominently displays in its webpage, along with the comparision chart of process of making frozen desserts and ice-creams.

But In this case of butter cookies, Amul has met its match in Britannia , they turned the tables on Amul and put forward to customers how much fat will they consume in this ad.

They ended with this tag saying

 "Too Much Butter may not always be better."

Now this is what we require in a good ad war. Lets see how it progresses....