Buying what people like
There is one advertising medium
everybody is familiar with: beer mats
bearing the Heineken logo. And yet, have
you ever seen a Heineken airbed?
Probably not. But there was a time when
the Advertising Buying department at
Zoeterwoude was lumbered with
thousands of them. For, unlike most
purchasing departments, Advertising
Buying has to deal with the out-of-the-
ordinary article, the article which is not
common stock. And to do this it spends a
total of about 7 million per year.
This is why the job of advertising material
buyer calls for great creativity: each
traditional advertising medium has to be
adapted to make it a worthy bearer of the
Heineken name. Or - in response to a sales
promotion campaign planned for some
part of the world - a completely new item,
like a beer mug or glass, may have to be
designed from scratch. Talking with the
Chief Buyer, Peter Ylstra, is an interesting
experience. For he has been in this very
specialized job for 25 years. So there are
not many of the pitfalls or tricks of the
trade he does not know. Picking out the
producer who can offer the right price is an
important part of the work. As is selecting
the manufacturer who has the expertise
enabling him to supply, say, an exact
colour shade on a certain type of fabric or
the ability to process new articles with
excellent results. But there is more to it
than just this.
Heineken is considered to be a premium
beer throughout the world. This means
that any articles used to promote its
consumption must also be of a premium
quality. As a result, nothing is left to
chance when it comes to deciding on the
raw materials, design, colours and, of
course, the overall standard of
workmanship. A bottle opener which
broke after only having been used a couple
of times would obviously be bad publicity
for our brand. Consequently, the quality
checks made at Heineken are extremely
thorough. as many a would-be supplier
of advertising materials has found to his
The Heineken miniature brewer's dray (5 inches
long), made of silver, is presented to business as
sociates on special occasions.
cost. Let us return to that Heineken
airbed. Thousands of them, all neatly
printed in green and complete with the
familiar logo, were once bought at the
other end of the world. Upon arrival in
Holland, they were all inflated and left for
24 hours suspended from the ceiling of a
huge hall. The next day part of them were
dangling limply, so the entire batch was
rejected.
Thoroughness in developing the new
Until recently Heineken was busy
designing a new "Heineken family glass".
Quite some time went by before a beer
glass design reached the drawing-board
stage. Even more time went by before a
range of half a dozen different-sized
glasses of the same basic model had been
designed to the complete satisfaction of
Corporate Advertising, which initiated
the series, and of Advertising Buying.It
then took months to find manufacturers
able to produce the new designs and to
deliver a product that would withstand the
rough handling expected during use. The
The new Heineken glass can be stacked up to
fourteen-high.
3
