The king of all marketing campaigns

I have learned this week that an impending royal inauguration can turn the mundane act of grocery shopping into a thing of joy and wonder.
 
I'm not particularly fond of grocery shopping.  I cope with it by sending myself into a Trolley Trance - a little known meditative state that sees me absent-mindedly strolling the aisles, half napping, half eyeing off the chocolate bars, looking at all the pretty colours, until I end up at the check-out with a full enough trolley.  It is generally only after I return home that I realise I purchased everything except the very item I went in to buy. As a consequence, and to avoid returning to the supermarket too often, I have developed an enviable level of domestic culinary agility, including the production of low down family favourites such as fish stew with sausages (but no fish), lasagne-less lasagne and herb-crusted lamb with missing herbs.
 
Having said that, grocery shopping in the lowlands has been extra challenging for me. Although there is no shortage of supermarkets, they are typically quite small, with aisles that are really too short  and too few in number to induce a sustained Trolley Trance. Most Dutch supermarkets also stock a limited range of products, which can at times necessitate visiting three different stores in order to source all of the ingredients required for a simple meal.  This often invokes a growling Trolley Troll, rather than a peaceful Trolley Trance.

Adding to the complexity, the Dutch approach to product placement is something I have not yet been able to fully understand. It takes quite a bit of skill to work out that the pineapple rings will be beside the corned beef and bottled frankfurts . . . on the off chance that you might be in the market for bottled frankfurts.

It's also handy to know that the spring rolls can be found next to the icy poles in the freezer section.

 

And that the laundry detergent is beside the pet food, which is conveniently located next to the potatoes.

But all of my petty frustrations with Dutch supermarkets evaporated this week. It seems there's nothing like a big Dutch occasion for bringing out the very best in the big Dutch marketing departments.

To give you an example, and to get you in the mood, let me backtrack a few months. I feel it's not too insensitive, now that the national devastation has eased a little, to highlight one of my favourite examples of Dutch marketing brilliance.  One particular personal hygiene manufacturer added to the anticipatory frenzy and performance pressure on the Dutch national football team during last year's European Cup by producing toilet paper printed with cute orange football-kicking dogs and the encouraging words "hup Holland hup". Ned Nederlander took a roll back to Australia for a friend who gave it to her 12 year old son, with instructions that it was to be put on his special "treasures" shelf, never to be used. It was cute; we all felt a little guilty using it for its intended purpose. The fact that Holland got well and truly poohed on in the opening round made it even more special.

But it's Queens Day that really gets the creative juices going in marketing departments. Especially a Queen's Day with a baton change between a mother and her son.  Inauguration-inspired grocery marketing has made supermarket shopping fun again.

I nearly fell into my trolley when I spotted this gem yesterday.

Talk about taking advantage of the extended cold weather - just rug up and make a nice big pot of King's Soup.  Five hundred grams of carrots, an orange capsicum, a brown (let's call it gold) onion, a couple of gold-wrapped stock cubes, an orange, and a sprig of rosemary, all together in a right royal orange packet. Had I been asked, I would have suggested they add a sweet potato.

The next aisle brought more jewels.  The 30 April (Queens Day) edition of cream of tomato soup. Note the little crown on the left of the label, because let's face it, tinned soup makes anyone feel like royalty, right?  On the right of the photo you can also make out a lovely biscuit tin bearing Queen Beatrix's face. So many collector's items, my trolley runneth over.

The biscuit manufacturers are clearly pursuing a strategy of packaging diversity. Not only have they produced a lovely tin with Queen Beatrix's smiling face (above), but they have also produced one with Wil-Al and Maxima (right), which is certain to appeal to younger generations. Personally, I couldn't choose between them so I had to get five of each.

I was truly delighted to also find that the local coffee makers weren't going to be left behind in the marketing stakes, offering a free unique spoon, and some special orange packaging for Tuesday's coronation.

And should you like a small treat to accompany your coffee, may I recommend King's Waffles?  Same recipe as last week, but a different - orange of course - packaging.



It's almost too obvious, given that we are celebrating the Oranje-Nassau family's rule, so I shouldn't have been surprised to discover that orange juice was not immune from the Queens Day treatment either. Like so many things in life, it benefits from the addition of a little French flair because after all, "sinaasappelsap" is a word somewhat lacking in regal grandure. So, if we call it jus d'oranje for a week, and add a crown to our logo, who knows what might happen?





For comparative purposes, the non-coronation packaging is also shown (right). The subtle addition of a crown is obviously perceived to be the key to a good logo upgrade.



  

The canny manufacturers of this bottle of €4.99 merlot seem to be targeting those with a taste for understated elegance and an inability to recognise that floral undertones are not usually associated with merlot. All power to them.

 



 

Of course, as any Marketing 101 student will tell you, the real test of a successful campaign is being able to sell something that consumers didn't even know they needed.

 

So, I've saved the jewel in the Koningennedag marketing crown for last. Orange revellers, I give you Royal W's. 

 

Who knew that we all needed something as unbelievably brilliant but undeniably essential as Royal W's? Of course we do. I certainly hope we do, given the number of packets that I squeezed into my shopping trolley! What an honour it must be for a king to have a "savoury corn snack with a cheese taste" produced in the shape of his initial.

Inspired by all of these irreverent Dutch marketing types, I find myself desperately hoping that the Duchess of Cambridge gives birth to a son. I trust that her people will approve my application to use a photo of Prince William and his son on the label of my gourmet bottled frankfurts range, to be sold under the "Little Willy" label.

Wachten, wachten

Waiting . . . waiting. Only two more sleeps.

The excitement in Amsterdam has been palpable in the past few months, as we all count down to the re-opening of the Rijksmuseum, the iconic national museum that invited the painters and decorators in ten years ago. Ten years. Really? That’s one year more than it took to build the thing.

There’s a part of me that can’t help wondering just how good I might look after a ten year restoration program. And a €375 million expense account.  I consider myself incredibly lucky to have had a one hour massage and a half hour facial on  two consecutive days over Easter.  I thought about following up with a pedicure on day three, but with temperatures still below 10^oC here, and a strong likelihood that I’ll be in boots for a while longer, I thought it a little self-indulgent. 

Anyway, for months now, the outside of the neo-Gothic Rijksmuseum has sported a huge, neo-digital clock, counting down to the neo-opening day and generating a level of anticipation that this country probably hasn’t seen since the ultimately devastating (from a Dutch perspective at least) World Cup Final of 2010. That ended in a 1-0 defeat of the Netherlands during extra time by their historical arch enemy, Spain (who appeared keen to avenge their loss of the lowlands in 1648 following the eighty years war. Eighty years. Talk about extra time!) To add insult to injury, the Dutch football team was subjected to accusations of foul play, bad sportsmanship and unseemly conduct.  Same thing happened in 1648. It makes it even funnier to me that a firm of Spanish architects won the tender for the restoration of the Rijksmuseum. Neo-attitude.

The clock pronounces “Nachten Wachten”, or nights waiting, a witty reference to the museum’s priceless centrepiece – Nachtwacht (The Night Watch) by Rembrandt. I remember staring at that clock for several minutes one day, grappling with a possible translation at a time when my repertoire of Dutch verbs would have numbered no more than twenty (it's now rocketed to about twenty three).  Suddenly I experienced a memorable linguistic lightbulb moment, realising that “wacht” could translate as either watch or wait. Nights waiting . . . Nightwatch.  I laughed out loud as I realised, quite smugly, that I had understood the irony, and I looked with pity at the passing tourists whose heads it must surely be going over.

 

Hence I retain a strange affection for the gaudy, neon hoarding. Of course, it signifies my coming of age as an unstoppable linguist, Antipodean expert in 17th century Dutch art and all-round aficionado of cultural wit. Setting that aside though, the clock  provides a taunting reminder of the inefficiencies of modern construction – the renovation commenced in 2003 and was expected to take three years, not ten.  Had the clock been counting upwards, marking the days since the museum closed in 2003, it would today announce something like “Jullie hebben gewacht: 3,400 nachten”. You have waited 3,400 nights. Thanks for your patience.

The renovation has been stymied throughout by the usual tendering controversies, some major asbestos problems, the resignation of the museum director, a misplaced hammer and the day to day challenges posed by tinkering with any building that has its foundations below sea level. It is rumoured that there was also a major disagreement on tile colours and floor coverings, in common with domestic renovations all over the world.

On top of all that, the project managers seem to have forgotten to account for the Dutch tendency to overleg. This broadly translates as “to consult”, but in the case of the renovated Rijksmuseum, translated instead to a seven year overrun.  The Dutch, bless them and their egalitarianism and tolerance of alternative views, have a tendency to widespread consultation on most matters, particularly administrative and professional.  This can be a fabulous thing, whereby a culturally ingrained openness to different opinions leads to a genuine meeting of multiple minds, a robust tussle of ideas and the generation of some amazingly innovative solutions. On the other hand, poor Ned Nederlander, my innately inclusive but efficiency-driven man, is regularly frustrated in his Dutch workplace by the need to grin and bear yet another round of suggestions and comments from a large number of colleagues and unsuspecting passers-by on something that really should have been done and dusted and at the printers last week.

In the case of the Rijksmuseum renovation, some eighty licences needed to be sought, all requiring considerable overleg.  Don’t ask me why those licences didn’t need to be sought, consulted on, modified, agreed and granted before construction began.  

There was another stereotypically Dutch sticking point in the whole Rijksmuseum project; bicycles. You see a cycle path has cut through the middle of the museum, via an elegant archway, ever since it was opened in 1885. The path was temporarily closed off during the renovations. I can’t imagine the outcry such a closure must have generated.  Nor can I imagine the clamour (nor the over-overleg) that ensued when it was announced a couple of years ago that, come to think of it, the cycleway would need to be permanently closed.  Even as a relative newcomer to this country, I know that some issues just aren’t worth “overlegging” about, because you’re simply never going to win. The preposterous suggestion that cyclists should be forced to ride a few hundred extra metres around the museum, instead of pedalling straight through it, is one such issue.



As the museum's Collections Director noted after the cycling lobby emerged victorious from the discussions, "The bicycle is folkloric in the Netherlands. Touch the bicycle, and you touch freedom." 

What I believe he really wanted to say, but didn't (probably because he lacked my insight into cultural wit) was "Amsterdam cyclists are the hub of this city, and they have generated a chain reaction that has forced us to find a bespoke solution to this controversy, meaning we have had to back-pedal on our plans to saddle people with an extended route around the rim of the museum".

So bicycles, that most beloved and undisputed Dutch icon will once more wheel along the path that bisects the Rijksmuseum.  I am so pleased. The cyclists, and the collisions with pedestrians that the museum’s director is convinced will occur, will be on exhibition for museum visitors to observe through renovated glass walls, in what I personally think will be a magnificent piece of constantly moving art, which could well become the Rijksmuseum’s greatest contemporary masterpiece.