New Dutch Brand 'Peut' Challenges the Iron Grip of the Ruling Oil Companies

Fed up with the iron grip that the multinational oil companies hold on local petrol stations, Dutch petrol station owners joined forces and established “The Free Pump” (de vrije pomp).

Peut is the brain child of The Free Pump, the Rotterdam-based cooperative that declared war on Shell, Esso en BP. Peut is an Dutch slang for petrol, so it’s a great brand name. The logo however resembles the Pinterest one with an additional petrol drop. That might get them into hot (legal) water!

The petrol station owners that joined Peut are quite verbal about why they made their move: “We are not into air miles, tiger jumps or whatever else. We as petrol station owners want to be entrepreneurs again and be able to be more economic", said Ewout Klok one of the independent petrol station owners.

Peut might come across as a free and independent rebel, but it is still connected to the big brands. The sad truth is that there are only a few companies in the world that trade in fossil fuels. Private label Peut is therefore supplied by multinationals such as Shell, Esso or (in this case) Argos.

"The multinationals produce so much that they have to trade excess supply in the free market. Independent petrol stations utilize that free market for buying fuel. The independent petrol stations therefore profit from this," explained Aad Correljé, energy specialist at the Clingendael Institute and the Delft University of Technology. "One could compare it with a major brand vs. private label."

The Independent Petrol Station Owners want to conquer the Netherlands. Under the Peut brand, they are planning to operate 300 pump stations nationwide within 5 years. The Peut crowd plans to jointly purchase fuel via the cooperative The Free Pump.

All in all, 100 entrepreneurs and 200 petrol stations are planning to join Peut as soon as their current contracts with the major oil companies expire. Not a bad start! Let’s see how it will pan out…

How Paper Magazine Used Kim Kardashian and Social Media To Promote Its Printed Issue

Paper Magazine used a clever strategy to promote its printed magazine - social media!

Founded and launched in 1984, Paper magazine is a New York City-based independent magazine focusing on fashion, pop-culture, nightlife, music, art and film. Its readership is around 155,000 with 70% of its readers located in New York and Los Angeles. The Paper Magazine’s website has around 500,000 unique visitors per month.

To attract more readers, it came up with a clever strategy – use archenemy the Internet to make a splash. The mag hired Jean-Paul Goude, the French photographer famous for his iconic shots of Grace Jones for a provocative photo shoot. It also enlisted the services of KKW for two reasons: (1) her online presence includes 25 million twitter followers and roughly the same number on Instagram, (2) she has no problem at all baring it all for the camera.

Goude shot Kardashian in several stages of undress – starting with her being fully-dressed in exactly the same pose as Grace Jones in her famous champagne glass photo, and ending with a full frontal nude pic.

Paper Magazine published the shots as part of its “Break the Internet” campaign, stating: "For our winter issue, we gave ourselves one assignment: Break The Internet. There is no other person that we can think of who is up to the task than one Kim Kardashian West. A pop culture fascination able to generate headlines just by leaving her house, Kim is what makes the web tick."

The strategy worked, resulting in hundreds of thousands of tweets, global online coverage, and discussed on various morning shows on TV.

Paper Magazine knows its stuff. In order not to oversell, the mag limits its racy version of the issue (including all KKW"s pics) to just 10,000 copies. Retailers and subscribers who want to get their hands on it, must purchase it online (oh, the irony) via the Paper Magazine website.

The magazine also announced that it will be producing more "event" covers, so stay tuned! Ironically enough, online exposure has done wonders for Paper Magazine.

As Drew Elliott stated: "We wanted to use this [cover] to help establish ourselves digitally. We never could have imagined that it would be this successful."

The main question remains – will Paper Magazine be able to create more provoking campaigns? Now that they have built a worldwide audience, the powers at Paper Magazine need to remain creative to maintain its loyal audience and customer base. If not, it will remain an amusing footnote in online marketing history.

(Image courtesy of Kelkulus)