I went to the pub on Friday night. No real surprises there. No surprise either that I was drinking imported bottled lager. In fact, let’s just dispense with this surprise thing altogether: I was drinking a beer that I often drink and have drunk for a while. I was drinking Vedett: a Belgian lager that is, by it’s own admission, just a tasty beer. As they say on their site: ’drinking Vedett won’t solve your problems, make you better looking or stop glabal warming. It’s a tasty beer, nothing more, nothing less’. And I like it very much.

Here’s something else that I like very much: their website

There’s loads wrong with it. It’s all in Flash for a start. If I showed it to our tech guys they’d hate it. It doesn’t follow best practice in ANY respect. The product info disappears, extremely annoyingly, before you’ve had chance to read it, to be replaced by some more information which you aren’t given time to read. And extremely frustratingly, because it’s Flash, I can’t direct you to the bits of the site I like with a link.

But it does something cool: it lets you upload a picture of yourself to the site, and they will print it on some of their bottles. In fact not just some of them, but 10,000 of them! You’ll probably never see one of the bottles with your mug on. They’ll probably end up in some trendy bar that you don’t go to (I know, I know, I drink it so it can’t be that cool. I get it). But you’ll know they’re out there! Little pictures of you will be part of someone elses night out! How cool is that?

So anyway, whenever I go to the pub and drink Vedett I end up looking at these pictures of strange people. They don’t print a name or any other details, so you end up wondering about this pic. Who is it? Where was it taken? What was happening? Who was behind the lens? It’s strangely compelling. Compelling enough for me to visit the site and have a look at any rate. Haven’t posted my picture up there yet though, that’s my next job. If you end up buying a Vedett and find a weird looking chap wearing a pair of plastic glasses gurning at you from the label, it just might be me.

I don’t know much about Vedett. They’re not a big player in the UK. They’re part of a smallish group (Duvel Moortgat) from Belgium. I’ve never seen any advertisements for them. In fact, the only time I’ve seen the brand is in certain ‘freehouse’ bars in London. What attracted me to the brand when I’ve seen it was the beer matt and the bottle /label design. And now I’ve seen the website. And between that triumvirate, they’ve managed to snag a loyal consumer. Just shows how important each and every customer touchpoint is, and that’s why we explore every touch point when we’re building a brand strategy for someone.

In case you were wondering, I was drinking Vedett here.