The secret of sustainable brands
When I left Belgium to become an ethnographer at the Zambia National Museum I suspected that my trip would be just the first adventure in the life of an explorer.
After five years studying “makisi” masks of the Mbunda tribe, I was invited to the British Museum, then invited to publish for the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Vienna, the University of California - UCLA in Los Angeles, the Central Africa Museum in Brussels, and finally asked to speak for the Belgian Anthropolgy Society and at congresses specialised in African art … I started to believe my premonition.
There wasn’t much work in this line in Europe, although Papua New Guinea did invite me to create a museum in Port Moresby! But I chickened out and entered brand marketing with Colgate-Palmolive, and then Kraft Foods, which became my new schools of learning.
One day a Belgian head-hunter passed through my village and offered me the challenge of helping to save Materne, a family business taken over by the Walloon Region, renowned in Belgium as an authentic brand of jams and fruit compotes. This would be the beginning of my life as a missionary for Belgian food brands.
Turning around Materne meant first convincing the unions that the national brand could become the cash cow of the company at a time when the industrial plan gave priority to the manufacture of private label products. After that, the board of directors had to be convinced that Materne should diversify into added value product lines such as “forest fruit” and “vintage harvests” which generated higher margins. Since the workers had marched down the streets of Brussels to make the government aware of the importance of Materne’s recovery, I decided to put Materne back on the streets when bus-shelter poster sites were introduced in Belgium. This was the campaign merci les fruits which dominated the new poster media.
The years passed and news of the success reached the owners of Spa mineral waters – a brand that was losing market share to French waters promising beauty and energy in highly creative and emotional brand advertising campaigns. The new challenge was simple: turn the old “queen” into a Catherine Deneuve, star of French cinema, and thereby rejuvenate the brand prior to the conquest of Europe.
The result was the famous black & white campaign reste comme tu es which dethroned the French brands and won so many advertising prizes with its new brand language. It was also the impossible dream of convincing the Dutch to drink bottled water, when water from the tap was free. And the launch in England and Germany of Spa original, in reference to the thermal water of kings and queens in the Café de l’Europe in the 19th century.
This success led to me splitting my life with the new queen of purity between marketing strategy and marketing auditoriums – without forgetting my new baby born out of wedlock: the pearly drops of Bru! This mineral water also belonged to the owners of Spa but embarrassed them more than a little because it was neither flat nor sparkling when it lay in the Ardennes forest. The idea of pearly drops comes to mind as soon as you taste this wonderful water because nature has given it a unique consistency with bubbles. Armed with this unique selling point, endorsement from Belgian’s top chefs in their restaurants enabled customers to get to know Bru before it was placed on supermarket shelves, helping the brand to become Belgium’s favourite table water within five years.
This road could have stretched even further, but there were other Belgian brands waiting in the wings. Thus started my third life: as a marketing consultant for Belgian brands: Belle-Vue beer, Côte d’Or chocolate, Marie Thumas canned foods, and Brussels City. This last assignment led to my work in city tourism marketing for the Brussels-Capital Region where for ten years we have been trying to seduce everyone to visit this city for reasons beyond the Manneken-Pis, Grand’Place and Atomium by creating a coherent branding in terms of content and communication.
Ethnographer, missionary, marketing consultant are three creative expressions of the same desire to help the patrimony of my country hold its head higher. Even if most of the brands I have worked with are no longer in Belgian hands, I have the timidity to believe that the quality of each brand concept has helped to seduce investors. All of these are sustainable brands and their secret lies in three principles: a respect for brand roots; an understanding of consumer desires; and the audacity of the creativity to make them stand out.
André Vrydagh, 18.11.2009
Contact : andre@andrebranding.eu