Smoked sausage & condoms

This week I received my delayed parting gift from CCCP, the agency I used to work for as a creative director. The gift is a print on canvas of an idea I once made for Dutch warehouse chain HEMA. A few years ago they took up condoms in their assortment and asked us to come up with an idea to make that fact famous to a young crowd.

The half smoked sausage (halve warme worst, as we call it in Dutch)  has been one of the heroes of HEMA since years. So we came up with the image of the sausage with a condom around it. Sounds like an obvious idea, yet simple and powerfull. The people at HEMA were very enthusiastic.

At CCCP we did some great advertising work for HEMA, mostly thanks to the client. We made the Top 5 of Most Stolen Products, the 80th Birthday Film and of course the Rube Goldberg Viral. HEMA is a great brand: their proposition is clear, they're not anxious, and they know a good idea when they see one. And we as an agency understood them very well. The only time an idea was rejected was with this sausage and condom. What a shame. As the American writer Elbert Green Hubbard said: "The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all."