HEMA Celebrates Its Fans By Sharing Their Stories

HEMA unveils ‘HEMA kwaliteiten’, a 360-campaign about and for its fans. For more than 90 years, the Dutch household name has been part of its consumers’ lives. Highlighting the different ways in which HEMA has become an integrated part of Dutch society, creative agency SWEET partnered with production company & photography agency HALAL to search for and tell the real HEMA stories. Bringing to life the message of ‘HEMA is for everyone’, 100 stories will eventually be told, 37 portraits in the first round. Kicked off with the launch of a 25-sec TVC, and four longer stories, as of today a new portrait will premiere each week.

Found and put under the loop by a bespoke research team, the stories were discovered through social media, focus groups or old letters from the HEMA archives, to mention some. No scripts, no hidden agenda. Not only are the stories uncensored, but the way in which they are told is tailored according to its individual message. A team of artists, directors and animators such as Johan Kramer, Andreas Pasvantis, From Form, Maria Walnut and Lieke Janssen were responsible for crafting individualized formats according to each story. All films have a distinct style and expression, reflecting the diversity of its consumers and their different characters.

The idea behind and realization of the campaign is a result of a longstanding relationship between the three involved parties.  With no official pitch or brief, collaboration and co-creation is truly at the heart of this work – at all levels.

Ferry Buitenhuis, Manager Marketing Campaigns, HEMA, comments: “At HEMA, making the daily lives of our customers easier and more fun is at the core of everything we do. We wished to not only communicate this message, but pay tribute to it. ‘HEMA kwaliteiten’ is the manifestation of co-creation not only with our creative and production partners, but even more importantly, with our customers.”

SWEET adds: “Everything about this project is a display of challenging the contemporary agency model. The strongest example of this is how a long-term relationship enabled us all to collaborate on creating a brief, and organically setting up a brand team of like-minded comrades consisting of who could traditionally be considered ‘client’, ‘creative’ and ‘production’. The boundaries and restrictions of these categories were eliminated, which enabled us all to be creative partners, truly collaborating on every aspect of the work.”