“I loved Knorr”, “before Magnum it meant big” or even the Carte d’Or ice creams which “don’t go with the back of the spoon”… The giant of the agri-food and food products hygiene Unilever (brands Knorr, Amora, Ax or Carte d’Or) has filed a summons against Intermarché for a poster campaign deemed denigrating. “We received a surprising subpoena from Unilever,” reacted the third French food distributor, confirming information from L’Informé.
Intermarché, noting that the approach “is part, from a timetable point of view, in the home stretch of commercial negotiations”, says it can “imagine that this is a very clumsy attempt at destabilization”.
Diverted advertising slogans
Unilever is contesting a communication campaign by Mousquetaires/Intermarché, which had hijacked advertising slogans associated with some of the brands in its portfolio to criticize excessively high price requests, or cases of “reduflation” or “shrinkflation”, when the quantities of products are reduced for an unchanged or even higher price.
The company listed on the London Stock Exchange has brought in court commissioners in recent days to “summon several Intermarché stores to stop these displays deemed to be denigrating,” sector specialist Olivier Dauvers reported earlier Thursday on his site “Le Consumer Web”.
“We denounce the practice of shrinkflation”
The exchange of arms occurs while supermarkets are conducting negotiations with their agro-industrial suppliers on the conditions of sale (purchase price, shelf space, promotional calendar, etc.) of a large proportion of the products sold in supermarkets. Coincidentally, the summary hearing was set by the Commercial Court for January 31, according to Intermarché, that is to say the last day of these commercial negotiations.
“We denounce the practice of shrinkflation for several weeks now, well before the start of the current negotiations,” commented Intermarché, which said it hopes “that this type of campaign will allow the manufacturers concerned to demonstrate greater transparency and moderation.” A few months ago, Intermarché had already criticized the manufacturer of Petit Marseillais soap for being “fad”, or frozen products Findus for throwing “a cold shoulder” with price requests deemed unreasonable.