REWE has sent the paper leaflet to the museum. The last printed flyer was sent to households on 24 June. From July, customers will have numerous alternative ways to find out about current offers.
As with the plastic bag, REWE is leading the way in the industry with its move to abolish the print leaflet. "This is not a marketing gag," emphasised Elke Wilgmann, the member of REWE's management responsible for marketing, at the press conference in Berlin. "The abolition of the hand label is part of our sustainability strategy. We have done some unthinkable things in recent years. We switched completely to green electricity in 2008. In 2021, we built a store in Wiesbaden entirely out of wood with a rooftop farm. We want to change attitudes and show attitude and rethink. That's why the hashtag #umdenkbar is not a claim, but an attitude."
"With this commitment, REWE is making a significant contribution to conserving our natural resources and reducing its owncarbon footprint," said Leif Miller, Federal Managing Director of NABU. "The abolition of the hand label is a wonderful sign. This is a good day for the environment." Miller personally adopted the paper leaflet in Berlin and appealed to the competition: "We are pleased that REWE is taking social responsibility and hope that many competitors in the food retail sector will follow this decision." NABU has been monitoring REWE's commitment to sustainability as an independent body since 2009.
Our CEO Lionel Souque posted the farewell to the print flyer on LinkedIn and invited the competition to join in.
In future, REWE customers will no longer have to leaf through the flyer at the weekend, but can find out about special offers in the REWE app, at rewe.de/angebote, in the REWE newsletter, via WhatsApp or in traditional media such as daily newspapers or on the radio. "We want to reach customers of all ages on the channels they use every day. We have tested the new media mix for the promotional business intensively and successfully in urban and rural regions," says Elke Wilgmann. "We are investing the cost savings from discontinuing the printed brochure sensibly - on the one hand in proactive advertising in daily newspapers, on the radio and on television, and on the other hand in selected sustainability projects such as the NABU climate fund."
The printed REWE brochure is by no means going quietly. After all, it marks the end of a piece of retail history. REWE set up the #umdenkbar gallery in Berliner Freiheit to celebrate the farewell of the retail icon. In the pop-up gallery, the retailer is not only exhibiting the last copy of the paper brochure. Four artists have explored the abolition of the paper leaflet in contemporary works.in their works, Marcel Kreuzer and Luisa Jung (both from Cologne) have focussed on saving paper, which they have used in an installation and a painting of a forest. Random EXP from Cologne processed the farewell in a three-part pop art painting, while Bond Truluv from Leipzig combined painting and augmented reality to draw attention to water savings.
At the end of the paper brochure, REWE Group Management Board member Peter Maly and the regional management chairmen Jochen Vogel, Stefan Hörning, Hanno Rieger, Jürgen Scheider, Hennig Opper, Tobias Menig and Elisabeth Promberger as well as REWE Dortmund Management Board member Andreas Schmidt made the #umdenkbar promise to employees in their video message. They all agree: we can do even more for a more sustainable world by rethinking and making the unthinkable possible.
Both German and English comments appear here.
Great video! It's really fun to adjust to the change.
Note from the EHA: the switch to green electricity was even ten years earlier! Greetings from Hamburg