The Actimel Allotments
Here’s a brief, maybe interesting observation, made whilst visiting my father-in-law’s allotment at the weekend.
You’re familiar with Actimel, no doubt…
Well, some smart cookie has come up with an ingenious use on his allotment for the empty bottles; put them on top of the garden canes, and you’ll avoid bending down quickly and getting one in the eye, as you’ll see the bottle.
If it’d been on one allotment alone, it wouldn’t have been worth mentioning.
But, yes, you guessed it… it’s on all the surrounding ones too…
Why’s this interesting? Well, for two reasons I think.
Firstly, it’s a great example of the things Mark Earls talks about in Herd; we’re a social animal, and social animals share and copy each other.
On walking past that first allotment, or in conversation with the allotmenteer, other allotment keepers have thought ‘ah, yes, that’s a good idea…’ and gone out to get themselves some Actimel.
Which brings us to the second point.
There’s no brand research, sales data or other study that would tell the Actimel brand team why, at a given moment in time, Actimel sales in Macclesfield spiked.
And, more than likely, even if you asked those people who’d bought Actimel to use the bottles on their allotment, they’d probably just repeat back to you what an ad said about the product, or what was on the packaging.
Just worth remembering we don’t have the full picture by any stretch of the imagination.
But the interwebs in all its glory means that we’ve a better chance of discovery small, interesting things about the products & brands we work on.
Especially if weirdos keep hanging around in allotments taking pictures and posting them up on the web…
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