Bad Branding - Duracell Repositions Itself As an Inferior Battery

It's this writer's unhappy duty to record on a dreadful blunder by one of many world's good advertising businesses: Duracell. Duracell is just a team of The Procter & Chance Organization, probably the major client packed things producer on earth and famous because of its advertising prowess. Indicating yet again that number business is perfect (hey, the famous '85 Bears had one loss), Duracell is currently running an ad in Newsweek journal wherever they position their batteries as lower-cost, less-powerful alternatives to "Energizer e2 Lithium" cells.

Over the past a long period, Duracell has properly located their alkaline batteries as more trusted for their "copper top" structure (which is really just a color on the cell's wrapper). Even though Customer Studies says that essentially all ordinary alkaline batteries are very similar in efficiency, Duracell has built a powerful market share cause through some brilliant television and radio commercials. In these ads, Duracell shows some very critical situations in which their batteries are employed, implying a distinctive and remarkable amount of reliability. They over and over repeatedly utilize the phrase, "when it really must perform," and then illustrate an ordinary battery software along with the critical one, implying that even yet in everyday use, your choice of battery matters.

In a single offer, for example, a young hockey player breaks on the court as his mother watches from the stands. Paramedics rush out and administer a defibrillator -- built with Duracell batteries, of course. The location cuts to a future senior high school graduation ceremony and shows the young man grinning in his cap and robe (he survived, obviously) and his mother is taking pictures with an electronic digital camera. The voiceover (intoned by Jeff Bridges) means that it's most readily useful to utilize Duracell in both the defibrillator and the camera.

They have several related commercials with Duracell batteries found in center displays and mobile video gaming, by NASCAR opening crews, etc. The consistently implied information (they never turn out and say this immediately, probably because most alkaline battery models do accomplish similarly) is that Duracell batteries are the most trusted and are unequaled in performance.Not many businesses usually takes a day to day solution like an alkaline battery and position it as a very critical -- also lifesaving -- purchase. No surprise P&H does so properly at advertising!

Today this: In the Nov. 10, 2008 dilemma of Newsweek, on site 75 within my edition, is just a full site offer stating, "These are hardly the times to cover more power than you need." The offer obviously shows an Energizer e2 Lithium mobile on the left and a Duracell battery on the right. There are a several bullets explaining the variations between the two batteries and then the statement, "Don't waste power. Don't waste money."

Don't waste power? What the heck? "Don't waste power" says the organization that has convinced people for several years that people need Duracell batteries since they are the only real brand that has ENOUGH power! That is a truly horrible advertisement that travels in the face of the brand position that Duracell has built properly over the length of a long period and at the price of several an incredible number of dollars. The apparent information is that the Duracell battery is the lower cost, less powerful battery vs. the Energizer brand.Okay, why did Duracell do this?

This type of offer happens whenever a brand's stewards overreact thoughtlessly or incorrectly to a competitor's actions. What's occurring in the battery marketplace is that there surely is a fresh kind of non-rechargeable client battery available and it uses lithium to supply remarkable efficiency in some applications vs. an alkaline cell. Energizer -- whose "bunny" plan just isn't as smart and powerful as Duracell's "copper top" plan -- has eventually found an area wherever it can make up market share, since it has done a nice job positioning its products in the brand new, lithium sub-category.

That new technology poses an issue both to consumers along with battery marketers since the lithium batteries are significantly more expensive and only outperform alkaline cells in some-- not totally all -- applications. For consumers, which means the best-cost solution differs: in some applications it's more economical to purchase lithium batteries because of their longer life; occasionally you spend less by buying alkaline batteries.

While I don't have any connection to anyone at Duracell, I suspect what's occurring is they understand Energizer's accomplishment with Energizer e2 Lithium as a threat to their typical alkaline batteries. Certainly, lithium cells are in fact a fresh choice in the marketplace and they're getting share from the alkaline battery market. But the issue is that a lot of consumers don't actually realize the facts of current battery technology. So that they look at an ad like usually the one in Newsweek and fairly obtain the information that "Duracell doesn't last as long as Energizer."

Number brand that has located itself as a performance head and has persuaded consumers to pay reasonably limited because of its products should actually reposition itself since the lower-cost, lower-quality alternative, and that is properly what this offer does. Actually, it's a well-known marketing maxim that the major brand shouldn't examine itself to opponents below any conditions -- that's a "follower" technique, not a "leader" strategy.

Complicating points further, Duracell has its own "uber-cell," the Duracell Ultra. I don't know if this can be a lithium or souped-up alkaline battery since the "How batteries work" url was down on the Duracell website when I clicked it. But obviously the Duracell Really could be the brand that plays with Energizer e2 Lithium.