When you go head to head in advertising, say in the manner of the supermarket giants Asda and Tesco, you must be absolutely sure of your facts if you don't want to be publicly embarrassed by your keen-eyed opponent. Good advice, but it comes too late to MPM Products who has been hauled before the Advertising Standards Authority, (ASA) for pitting its Applaws cat food brand against Town & Country's HiLife.

Town & Country Petfoods Ltd went to the ASA to challenge claims, made by MPM in a trade mag. advert, that:

"In most speciality stores Applaws outsells the combined sales of Sheba, Gourmet and Hi-Life."

and for describing Applaws as:

"The leading brand in most UK pet stores."

This was certainly head to head advertising, with MPM directly challenging some well known cat food brands: Sheba, (a Mars brand) and Gourmet, (a Purina brand and part of the corporate giant Nestle). However it was the much smaller company Town & Country that took offence and set out to protect its HiLife cat food product.

The company asked whether either of these claims could be substantiated and also questioned a further claim that the chicken used in Applaws had been fed: "a hormone free organic feed."

In its defence MPM was able to show that sales of Applaws from May 2008 to April 2009 and sales growth in 2008 were greater than the combined sales of the cat food brands, Sheba, Gourmet and Hi-Life in the second and third leading specialist pet stores in the UK. However the company did not supply information for Pets at Home, by far the largest specialist pet store in the UK.

ASA firmly rejected MPM's ad saying that the incomplete data meant it could not substantiate its "outsells" and "leading brand" claims. The ASA also extracted a retraction from MPM that its hormone free organic fed chicken claim: "was made in error and would not be used in further advertising".

Head to head advertising can send a powerful message to the consumer but it also directly challenges brands owned by your opponents who will be out to trip you up if they can, as MPM discovered.

I notice Applaws is now concentrating on the fact that its pet food is cereal free. Its latest trade ad kept my attention for a few minutes - because it takes some working out:

"APP AWS, EIGHTY P RC NT D Y ME T  ONTENT"

"NO CEREAL"
..much more fun - I think.

Submitted by: Steve O'Malley      

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