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

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Heineken Contact | 1982 | | pagina 3