Rival brands: friendly competition or battle that neither can ever win?

I have to agree with the age old phrase "competition drives innovation". The worlds best-marketed brands all seem to have one strong rival with each brand constantly trying to out-market the other. It  is these brands which I find fascinating and it is even more interesting to consider whether brands in fact, benefit from these huge rivalries.

Directly targeting or responding to the competition is highly common in marketing efforts, I have seen it in my own industry, telecoms, with ads such as these:

3 hit out at Vodafone customers with this banned ad

Vodafone's ad promising a Fixed Price for your entire contract

However, there are far more famous and controversial rivalries:

1. McDonalds vs Burger King

As I mentioned, innovation is key in beating your rivals and due to the fact that McDonalds and Burger King's value propositions are fairly homogeneous, there is a lot of mimicking from both sides. Big Mac, Whopper... are there really many differences? Both brands have sued each other for copyright infringement on a number of occasions. 

Burger King actually made a peace offering for just one day in this story, which was swiftly rejected by McDonalds!  However, what a great bit of PR for BK anyway, making them look like the soft, underdog!

2. Pepsi vs Coca-Cola

Perhaps one of the most historic rivalries, dating back to the early 1900s, and the creativity behind the rival campaigns is fantastic.

Pepsi are definitely more aggressive in their competitive attitude through advertising, but unfortunately Coke have held on to the top spot. Coke has become a name to replace the cola industry as a whole- who goes in to a bar and says "Can I have a vodka and Pepsi?". Coca-cola tend to stick to their traditional roots in terms of branding whereas Pepsi go modernistic, proving that being true to your roots pays off. Coke markets happiness with their 'Share a coke' campaign or their new slogan 'Taste the feeling', whereas Pepsi go for a 'cool' vibe with collaborations with NFL and David Beckham.

3. Apple vs Samsung

Samsung are definitely the Pepsi of the mobile technology world. Their dig at Apple (and Apple customers) below, indicates their willingness to take on the rivalry first hand:

You are often asked; are you an Apple or a Samsung person and it's rare that people switch between the two. I am an Apple user but of course since working at Vodafone my eyes have been opened to the world of Android and how much Android devices can really do. However, if you compare Samsung and Apple's marketing spend vs market share, the true stats really become clear:
Samsung: £8.4bn of marketing spend 19.9% of smartphone market share 15% of total operating income of smartphone makers Apple: £1bn of marketing spend 14.6% of smartphone market share 92% of total operating income of smartphone makers
Whilst Samsung make phones to suit lots of markets, providing lower-range cheap smartphones as well as your S6 Edge's to a premium market, the numbers really do show that Apple's smaller range, however highly targeted to those who expect more from their phones, really does pay off. 

Hope you enjoyed this post, let me know your favourite brand rivalries, tweet me at @stefclarkx

iNnocent 300ML

The hype around the new iPhone 6 was always destined to be big. Apple are geniuses at creating a buzz around their new phone launches, with long queues being pictured worldwide outside their stores. The PR they receive around the launch is endless and the social media buzz surrounding the new product is priceless. The way Apple keep the phone's specifications deadly secret until days before it's release also adds to the desirable and exclusivity of the product.

As Apple gets the limelight, other companies are able to capitalize on their success and get free PR and attention off the back of Apple's.

I really like the way that Innocent Smoothies used their humour and "cheekiness" to produce this amusing ad:

They also used a guerrilla marketing strategy and sent representatives to the store launches where hundreds of people had queued outside to buy the phones, and this was covered heavily by the press. Therefore innocent drinks (who are owned by Coca-Cola- arguably the best marketed brand on the planet) received press coverage and their ad went viral on social media.

Some may say that hijacking other brand's marketing to pursue your own product is unethical, however it is an inexpensive and clever form of marketing, if done in the correct way. It's perfectly legal and if anything, it actually added to Apple's publicity.

An interesting experiment

I attended an event on Saturday where an interesting experiment was done...

The speaker asked the audience to raise their hand if they have a Samsung Galaxy Phone, to which a small proportion of the audience raised their hand. He then asked who owned a BlackBerry, again only a few hands were raised. Finally, he asked the audience to raise their hands if they own an iPhone- and not surprisingly, around 85% of the audience did....

He then asked us to consider why so many people owned iPhones, is it because iPhones are better? is it that they perform better or have functions that other phones do not?

He then asked of the audience that owned Samsungs or BlackBerrys, which of those liked owning that phone, to which they all said yes....

Therefore the argument that iPhones are 'better' than any other phone cannot stand, as some prefer using other phones.

So why do Apple dominate the phone market??

They have been able to create a perception of being the best phone on the market. Their outstanding branding, product awareness, public relations and customer service are what I believe had lead Apple to such high success.

If you're friends are buying, chances are you will too....

And it's happened before! In the 80's everyone had a walkman, if you had just a normal cassette player it wasn't a walkman so it wasn't considered popular - it still played cassettes (and some personal cassette players were far superior to walkmans with extra features), but walkman was THE name.

The iPhone is the same, you pay to "fit in", suprising how much people will spend to adhere to their peers isn't it!? As for everyone having an iPhone that isn't exactly true, that is just the image that Apple try to project towards people to make them believe.