Agency Spy Introduces the Vanhills
By Lindsay Rittenhouse
The Martin Agency invites viewers to meet the Vanhills, a new fictitious and seemingly unethical 1 percenter family behind a large chain of supermarkets, as it kicks off its first campaign for the expanding global German discount grocer Lidl, “Don’t Let Them Waste Your Money.”
“This new campaign is designed to raise awareness about the costly inefficiencies of traditional supermarkets and the savings that Lidl’s streamlined approach brings to customers every day,” Elina Elvholm, director of brand marketing at Lidl U.S., said in a statement. “When customers shop at Lidl, they experience less complexity, lower prices and better quality choices.”
“Don’t Let Them Waste Your Money” launched today with its first 30-second video, “Apple Pyramid,” which will be televised in six U.S. states near Lidl locations. The supermarket chain opened its first 20 stores in Virginia and the Carolinas over the summer, with plans to grow its footprint to 100 locations along the East Coast.
The larger campaign encourages consumers to “rethink grocery,” as it persuades them to believe they are “being ripped off” if they shop at any grocer other than Lidl. The Vanhills, for their part, serve as the face of large, “broken and bloated” supermarket chains that use “tricks to con consumers into paying more for inferior and inefficient products,” according to a statement from The Martin Agency.
As we saw from the first ad, the faux Vanhills Inc. chairman Lance Vanhill questions why the company wastes money on employing a worker solely responsible for stacking apples in a pyramid to make them appear fresher. His mother, CEO Kitty Vanhill, scoffs at him, saying: “What do you know about anything? It’s either fruit pyramids or we start selling apples that are actually fresh.”
Kitty Vanhill then pauses, as if she’s considering the preposterous notion, before she and the rest of the gang (including the stock hand) burst out in laughter.
The Vanhills will be worked into a series of TV ads for Lidl in the coming weeks.
“When you get a chance to work with a brand as fearless and competitive as Lidl, you have to deliver work the category won’t see coming,” noted David Muhlenfeld, vp and creative director at The Martin Agency. “So we went semi-ballistic and took a cheerful hammer to fruit pyramids and all the other tricks traditional groceries use to make you pay more than you should.”
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