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Archive for the ‘Advertising’ Category

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.

 
 

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.

 
 

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.

 
 

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.

 
 

Socks

22 Dec 2008


This print ad for Armani created a lot of buzz: “Did Beckham’s briefs get stuffed with socks: yes or no?

Belgian fashion store Deleye’s new underwear campaign on the other hand doesn’t leave you with any questions:

 
 

Beer bag

16 Dec 2008

Bagvertising isn’t new, I’ve seen it many times before, but the results are often very nice.

Just like this one for example:

shumenskobag

Although I like this example, I seriously doubt that the optical illusion is as good in real life as it is in these pictures. If the optical illusion is any good you can be sure of two things:

a) this bag will turn some heads when an old lady walking down the street is carrying it.

b) a lot of people are going to want one of these bags.

Agency: Noble Graphics Creative Studio, Bulgaria

 

Police Museum

03 Dec 2008

policemuseum1.jpg

I like this campaign for the Vancouver Police Museum. Especially because I recognize myself in it and recognition is always a guarantee for success: in music, in movies and also in advertising.

When I drive home from the movie theatre, after seeing a movie with lots of fast car chases, you can bet on it I’ll put my pedal to the metal: full throttle all the way home! That feeling is just what advertising agency Cossette West tries to put in these ads and in my opinion they surely succeed in it.

policemuseum3.jpg

This second one from a series of 3 print ads is less powerful I think; It doesn’t look natural and it’s not spontaneous enough.

And here’s number 3. This one suffers a bit from the same disease: Read the rest of this entry »

 
 

Adidas viral videos

02 Dec 2008

Last week Adidas released a bunch of viral videos: some of them are quite good, some of them really aren’t. We saw Arsenal’s Emmanuel Adebayor playing Snake with his football shoes, Madrilista Arjen Robben with his magical footgear and Chelski midfielder Michael Ballack trying to shoot through a hoop.

The viral that got the most views and the most buzz was this clip of Liverpool icon Steven Gerrard shooting at clay pigeons with his teammate Xabi Alonso at the Liverpool training pitch. Advertising agency 180\TBWA Amsterdam claims that they didn’t use any kind of computer manipulation for this clip. For some people that’s good enough to believe Gerrard actually hit the pigeon. But I’m not some people, I don’t believe it!

The camera phone effect should contribute to the credibility of the clip but for me it does exactly the opposite. The effect should make us believe that this video isn’t staged by Adidas (or it’s advertising agency), that Gerrard and Alonso are just kicking footballs at clay pigeons for a few hours and that a fan was filming this the entire time with his cellular phone. For me it would be more convincing if they dropped the amateur look. It would be more credible if Adidas just came clean and admitted that it’s partly staged: that they asked Gerrard to shoot at clay pigeons for a commercial, just hoping he would hit one after a few tries and that he actually did it eventually.

In France Adidas gave us some better stuff: they put French goalkeeper Steve Mandanda in the showroom of the Marseille Adidas store. Actually it wasn’t the real Mandanda, it was a holographic clone of the goalie. The ad agency also put a Making Of clip online, which is pretty smart because the holographic goalkeeper now leads a second life on the internet. As far as I’m concerned, this trick is way better than the 4 other virals combined.