Distinctive & Scalable Brand Asset

One brand asset. Thousands of products.

Dirk is a successful family-owned discount supermarket with a strong focus on manufacturer brands. But its private-label share was well below the market average.

The challenge was to create a distinctive brand uniform that would build recognition across categories, while helping the private-label team work efficiently and bring new ranges to shelf faster.

The name ‘1-de-Beste’ was a given, and the family deliberately chose not to use the Dirk retail brand.

At Anthem-SGK, Marcel as creative director worked with Arthur Brandenburg as a team on the new strategy and concept for Dirk. They worked closely with the family and the commercial team to design brand mark that could work across a wide variety of products and create an identity that could be used for in-store communication. The existing rosette was redesigned to become the distinctive asset at the core of the private-label range.

A uniform that knows how to flex

The new rosette became a recognisable holding device, creating consistency and impact across categories.

Rather than designing every range from scratch, the team created a flexible visual system: distinctive enough to build recognition, but adaptable enough to meet the needs of very different categories, price points and product segments.

This made the identity easier to manage, faster to roll out and more consistent across the portfolio.

From bottom shelf to centre stage

Today, ‘1-de-Beste’ has become an important part of the succes of Dirk as supermarket and has moved from the bottom shelf to a much more prominent role in-store.

The private-label portfolio has grown significantly and now represents a share more in line with the Dutch supermarket market.