The Great Battery Bunny War: Mascots, CEPs and the supercharged battle for market share

Quick! Which battery brand is this a commercial for?

You might be thinking, “Well, it’s got pink toy bunnies playing drums, so it’s gotta be Energizer. Except … this smells like a trick question, so I’m gonna say … Duracell?” Ding, ding, ding! It’s a Duracell ad, and they were the first battery brand to play the pink, battery-powered, drumming bunny game.

“Hang on,” you might say. “If Duracell was the first brand to use pink, battery-powered drumming bunnies, how the hell did we end up with the Energizer Bunny, one of the most iconic mascots in marketing history?” Fantastic question.

You might not remember the great battery bunny war of the late 20th century. So let’s hop (pun intended) into SRH’s sweet custom conversion van, pop a cassette into the 8-track and crank up the prog rock … ‘cause we’re cruising back to the 1970s! Let’s go!

(Couple of things to keep in mind: Back in the 1970s, Energizer was called Eveready, and they were the market leader by a mile. They were also the first to develop and market a commercially viable alkaline battery.)

Duracell launched the first drumming bunny campaign in 1973. The ad itself was simple but clever. We see a bunch of pink, battery-powered bunnies playing drums. One by one, the bunnies slow down and stop. The Duracell Bunny is the last bunny drumming. It’s a cute/silly show-don’t-tell product demo wrapped around a solid insight.

The claim, of course, was that Duracell batteries last longer, especially in power-hungry electronic toys. And if you were a parent or a child back then — or if you regularly used power-hungry electronic devices — Duracell batteries solved an obvious and frustrating problem. Their claim, however, was a bit of misdirection.

Duracell wasn’t comparing their alkaline batteries to other alkaline batteries. They were comparing newer alkaline batteries to older zinc-carbon batteries. Which? Were perfectly fine for low-drain devices like TV remotes, but if your electronic gadgets had motors, gears, actuators and whatnot, zinc-carbon batteries just didn’t last very long.

Duracell batteries were better than zinc-carbon batteries, but so was every other alkaline battery brand out there.

As we’ll see in a moment, Energizer was not happy with the Duracell campaign. Partly because Duracell was comparing apples to smaller, disappointing apples, but also because Energizer (again, Eveready at the time) was the OG alkaline battery innovator.

Duracell ran the drumming bunny campaign for about 15 years, and then, having made their point, they stopped. Apparently, they also let the trademark on the Duracell Bunnies expire in 1988.

Keep in mind that at this time, Eveready/Energizer was still the market leader with around 60% of all sales.

Here’s where it gets weird. Energizer launched their own version of the bunny — a neon pink, drum-banging, flip-flops and sunglasses-wearing, effortlessly cool, bad-ass, Energizer-powered bunny.By the way? No one does this. This is like if Progressive decided to create a slightly greener gecko mascot with spiky blue hair and a New Zealand accent.

The Energizer Bunny might be the only brand mascot born entirely out of spite.

That first ad was supposed to be a one-off parody of the original Duracell ad. But they liked the character so much that Energizer decided to keep it going. They created a series of fake ads that the Energizer Bunny would interrupt. Each ad had the iconic tagline, “Still going. Nothing outlasts the Energizer Battery. They keep going and going and going … ”

Duracell wasn’t about to roll over, and they challenged Energizer in court. After a long, complicated legal battle — there have been many long, complicated legal battles between them — Duracell was allowed to use its own bunny mascot everywhere except the US and Canada.

In a later campaign, the Energizer Bunny escaped a series of villains, including King Kong, Darth Vader, the Wicked Witch of the West, Wile E Coyote (our favorite of these spots), Dracula (our least favorite) and fox hunters.

Spoiler alert! Darth Vader is also the Energizer Bunny’s father.

Meanwhile, Duracell ran a campaign promoting their copper top tester. These “tester-monials” featured category entry points — moments where having a dead battery was inconvenient, annoying and/or an actual problem.

Both campaigns were entertaining and fun. Duracell’s campaign, however, featured moments when the brand solved a customer’s needs, wants or desires. Even if the consumer needed, wanted or desired to spend all night chasing UFOs.

While these rivals were going toe to toe, Energizer was losing ground, and Duracell was slowly becoming the market leader.

Why? Eveready was first to market with the alkaline battery — they held the damn patent — but they were laser focused on their more profitable but completely inferior zinc-carbon batteries. When high-drain devices like electronic toys and portable cassette players started to become incredibly popular, they missed the wave. The future happened, and they weren’t ready for it, even though they were in the best possible position to ride that wave.

Union Carbide had also sold them to the pet food conglomerate Ralston Purina, which didn’t help.

Even though the Energizer Bunny ads were wildly clever, Duracell’s “Tester-monial” campaign was clever and it addressed a real consumer pain point. Back then, there was no easy way to know how much charge a battery had left. The free battery tester Duracell built into the packaging offered an ingenious solution.

So what does this mean for you?

Fluent devices like mascots and characters are mentally sticky in ways other distinctive brand assets aren’t, which makes them incredibly effective. Should you have a mascot? Probably, yes. However, you should really get your own, because …
Snatching the pink bunny from Duracell was a massive risk, and not just because of the inevitable legal issues. Duracell had built a lot of mental availability (pink bunnies = Duracell = the longest-lasting battery) over 15 years. The Energizer Bunny was a reaction to that, so there was a better than even chance they were spending a lot of money to promote Duracell. Anything that confuses people is generally not good. Which leads us to our next point …
Be relentlessly you. Don’t copy your competitors’ thinking; you can do it better. Be you, look like you, have your own positioning and come up with a strategy to beat them. Easier said than done? Absolutely.
Consumers really only care about their needs, wants and desires. If you can own the moments when those needs, wants and desires arise — the moments when someone enters the category — you’re ahead of the game.
Without diagnosis, a guiding principle and coherent actions (strategy), even the greatest ad campaign cannot save a brand. Energizer made a pile of very odd business decisions, which included the Energizer Bunny.

At first, this SRH Empirical Marketing Dispatch was going to be about how weird this is …

Two massive, market-leading battery brands should not each have a pink bunny mascot. It’s bananas. Legally, the mascots can’t be in the same room, sort of like matter and antimatter, but it’s still bananas.

We’re big fans of mascots and characters. They are super effective. Category entry points, however, are the foundation of mental availability, which is ultimately what you need to drive profitability and growth.

We’ll see you next time.

Sources!

Energizer Bunny – Wikipedia
Duracell Bunny – Wikipedia
A case that will run and run: Duracell and Energizer’s court fight over rabbit mascots – The Guardian
Duracell sues Energizer, claiming ad campaign features ‘misleading’ battery life claims – CNN Business
Duracell International Inc – Encyclopedia.com