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Vanity plate

19 Apr 2009

BLU-001

BLU-001

A good example of the commercial use of vanity plates. Blue, an exclusive shoe shop in the Belgian coastal town of Knokke, is showing off with this Smart car with vanity plate BLU-001.

 

The FMCG War

14 Feb 2009

In Belgium there’s an unusual war going on between The Delhaize Group and Unilever. Delhaize, being one of the biggest chains of supermarkets in Belgium, refuses to take Unilever’s products into stock at the conditions Unilever provides to the supermarkets. Unilever reacted with buying ad-space in the Belgian newspapers to convince the consumers to switch to other supermarkets, where the Unilever products are still available. Banning Unilever from the shelves has a big impact on the shops because Unilever has a whole lot of leading brands under its umbrella. Brands that the Belgian consumers use on a daily basis: Axe/Lynx, Dove, Rexona, Cif, Sun, Lipton, Becel, Maïzena, Knorr, Bertolli, Calvé , Magnum, Solo, Omo, Sunlight and about 250 other brands. When the current stock runs out you won’t be able to find these products in the Delhaize supermarkets.

While the Belgian media is figuring out who is going to win this war, I think their asking the wrong questions. It’s not about who’s winning this war, it’s about who loses the least.

- Delhaize will lose customers because a lot of the consumers are loyal to the brands, especially when it’s about products you use every day to fulfill basic needs (hygiene, hunger, thirst, …) and we’re not talking about 1 brand but about +250 brands. People who have been eating Zwan sausages for many years want to keep eating Zwan sausages. For products like toothpaste, deodorant of laundry detergent you don’t switch easily when you’re satisfied. People who drink Lipton every day don’t feel like switching over to the Delhaize house brand. When it comes to products you use on a daily basis, you want to use a brand that you know, trust and that you’re satisfied of.

- Unilever will lose customers because some people are loyal to Delhaize, because of its good reputation of high quality and diversity. Or maybe they just shop at Delhaize because it’s closer than other stores. Delhaize offers other brands for all the products they’ve banned from the shelves and in the business of Fast Moving Consumer Goods people who aren’t loyal to the brands will take the chance to try another brand. Simply because it’s not a big risk, it’s not like your buying an expensive car that you hope to drive for 10 years. When you take the risk of switching brands and after you using it you notice that you don’t like it, you only lost a few coins and you can go back to the brand you were using before.

The last few years shopping at two different supermarkets every week has become common: people buy half a shopping cart at Delhaize or Carrefour and continue their spending at Colruyt, Lidl or Aldi supermarkets. I think this is going to become even more common if Delhaize continues to ban the +250 Unilever brands from their stores.

I’m quit curious on how this is going to evolve: which side is going to give in? Delhaize? Unilever? Neither?

I think it was a daring decision of Delhaize, whether it was a smart decision time will tell. One thing I’m sure of is that Unilever’s ads in the newspaper must have stung a bit. In these ads Unilever shows pictures of all their top products and brands and states that Delhaize shoppers can better switch over to other supermarkets if they want to keep buying their favorite brands.

 
 

Designing the Obama campaign logo

13 Feb 2009

Sol Sender from Mode explains the design process of the Obama campaign logo.

 

Bagvertising (2)

02 Feb 2009

A while ago I wrote about the beer bags and now I found another nice example of Bagvertising.

Magic-i’s floating bags:

With the Beer bags I had some serious doubts about the way they would look in real life. I was sure that the optical illusion looked better in the pictures than the real bags would look. With these floating bags I don’t have any doubts about the way it looks in the streets. As far as I’m concerned this is a great campain. The only point of critisism I can think of is that these bags might not be friendly for the hands when there is a lot of weight in them.

Agency: Grey, Kuala Lumpur.

 
 

Test your awareness – did you notice?

23 Jan 2009

Amazing cycling safety campaign for Transport for London.

 

Fast Ronaldo

09 Jan 2009

According to this commercial, football star Cristiano Ronaldo can easily keep up with a Bugatti Veyron:

His own Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano on the other hand seems to be a car he can’t control: this morning he crashed it in a tunnel near Manchester Airport. Amazingly Ronaldo stepped out of the wreckage without a scratch. The car didn’t survive the blow though. I guess Ronaldo knows what he will be working for the next 3 days.

 
 

Objectified, a documentary on product design

07 Jan 2009

Gary Hustwit is working on a documentary about industrial design. “Objectified” will offer a look behind the scenes of everything from furniture to gadgets, with an emphasis on the creative process and the people behind it. The trailer looks very promising:

Previous movies of Hustwit include Helvetica which is all about typeface and fonts.

 

Origami creativity

02 Jan 2009

Sipho Mabona is an origami artist. Origami, the ancient Japanese art of paper folding, can create stunning video commercials when combined with stop motion recording. This video, created for Asics by Sipho’s company Mabona Origami, won several international prizes.

Have a look at some other creations by the same artist at his Flickr photostream or this profile page.