Vielfalt (Diversity)
EDEKA
Issue 46 | March 2018
Agency
Jung von Matt/NEXT ALSTER Hamburg
Creative Team
Creative Executive Creative Director Jens Pfau Creative Directors Anna Lichnog, Sebastian Schnell Art Director Pia Mader Senior Copywriter Heiner Twenhäfel Junior Art/Copy Dany Rothemund
Production Team
Production Producer Markenfilm MD Kai Sehr Markenfilm Producer Marie Bohr Nordmeister Christian Nord, Malte Hagemeister 2wei Music Simon Heeger, Christian Vorländer
Other Credits
Other Managing Director Peter Ströh Account Director Florian Laufenberg Senior Project Manager Isabell Mielke Client CMO Claas Meineke
Date
August 2017
Background
German supermarket EDEKA was well known for the great variety of its products.
At a time when diversity had become a major issue across the world, with travel bans and tensions over immigration, the brand wanted to signal its own views on the importance of ethnic diversity.
Idea
After almost six months of preparation, and for one day only, the most-German of supermarkets cleared all its shelves of all the foreign goods it usually stocked and offered for sale only products made in Germany. The empty shelves showed Germans what less diversity actually looked like.
Customers were amazed and thanks to the video clips and photos they shared in social media, the stunt went viral the same day.
Two weeks later, EDEKA published their own video, encouraging further discussion about racism and diversity.
Results
More than 117 articles were published on this subject worldwide. More than 10,000 posts were generated in social media with an engagement of 328,000 users. Around 9,000 followers were reached on Twitter and around nine million on Facebook.
Content was shared over 30,000 times so that, worldwide, the campaign reached more than 105 million people. After the stunt EDEKA generated 18,000 new followers.
Our Thoughts
One facet of the Trump effect has been to persuade brands to make a stand, mostly on the liberal, more tolerant side of the wall.
This is quite a risk because as the world polarises, not everyone is going to share their values.
That said, when Protein World's 'Beach Body Ready' poster sparked a storm of feminist outrage in the UK, it also provoked an anti-feminist backlash and £1 million of sales in four days.
Personally, I love this brave statement because it's a simple but startling visualisation of the data.