In a CORNER

Have you seen the new Müller outdoor campaign?

Each poster shows one of their Corner yogurts in big close-up. So all you can see is the yogurt and the stuff in the corner. The corner of the yogurt making up the corner of the poster.

I saw it on Twitter, where Paul Bailey described the ads as a brilliant use of product as distinctive asset.

Brilliant.

Claire Strickett added seven good reasons for it being great:

1. It’s a unique, ownable product feature. (Muller launched Fruit Corner yogurts in the UK in 1987).

2. It triggers memories associated with this feature (like do you fold and tip or dollop in bits?)

3. You know who it’s for (there’s a small logo in case you’re not sure).

4. It strengthens memory structures in a way that makes the product more likely to come to mind (because people associate yogurts with corners with Müller).

5. It looks appetising (which it does).

6. It does all these things in the simplest possible way, which makes for distinctive, low-processing advertising (and simplicity is a bit of a forgotten art in OOH advertising).

7. It got approved by the client.

Richard Taylor on LinkedIn praised how it played to our calm neuro design bias amidst an agitated world. He’d also tracked down the 3D version of the poster where the corner of the site itself was bent by some clever carpentry (one for the awards juries there).

Gareth Turner rationalised it was all about reminding lapsed buyers of the product’s taste credentials.

Back on Twitter, Nick Hirst felt corners were a positive but now latent association for Müller, so this was to remind people of the product’s existence and reclaim the association.

I mean, I’ve worked on yogurt brands a few times.

I’ve had a client, Gerry Roads, described the yogurt fixture as the ‘Killing Fields’ of the chiller (Müller Corner is currently 70p or 6 for £3 in Tesco).

I know since 1987 Müller has grown to become a massive and architecturally complex brand in the UK, with sub-ranges like Light, Light Greek Style, Light Chocolate Fix, Bliss, Corner Bliss, Rice, Skyr and Kefir Smoothie.

So I can well appreciate the good old Corner may have got forgotten in all that extension building.

I’ve also followed the growth of ‘distinctive asset’ as a term over the last few years. How important it is that when a brand turns up in people’s lives, they know it’s you. Distinctiveness over differentiation.

And I completely agree that assets can trigger associations. How you stand out, what you stand for. A corner of the yogurt, a corner of the mind.

But back to that word “brilliant”.

Really?

It’s a shot of the product, cropped well. With a logo.

Is that all it takes these days?

Where’s the idea?

Still, nice yogurt. Haven’t had one for ages.