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Please direct individual enquiries about the history of Migros to the Historical Company Archives of the Federation of Migros Cooperatives.
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In their advertising campaigns, both Migros and Henkel frequently referred to the ongoing competition between their washing powders, Ohä and Persil. They each used different techniques in their attempts to win the hearts and minds of Swiss housewives.
For many years, Gottlieb Duttweiler draws attention to what he sees as overpriced brand products. His fight begins in 1931 when he challenges the market leader Persil from the German company Henkel with Migros’ first own-label non-food product, the washing powder Ohä,. This battle ends in the Federal Court where Duttweiler is sentenced to pay a laughable CHF500 in damages.
More important than the legal fight, however, is the advertising battle with which both Henkel and Migros AG want to win customers for their products. The multinational concern has unequalled resources available. Duttweiler, on the other hand, fights with more aggressiveness and ingenuity to win the hearts and souls of the housewives, and uses the Migros sales vans as a cheap form of advertising.
When Henkel sues on the grounds that the packaging of Ohä can be too easily confused with that of Persil, the Migros founder asks in a flyer: “What do you say, dear housewives, to this assessment of your powers of judgement?” The customers subsequently air their annoyance with Henkel’s arrogance in a multitude of letters. One housewife from Canton Bern writes: “I have now used Ohä three times for the washing, and I have to tell you that I am very happy with it. Only someone who is colour-blind could confuse the packaging with Persil.”
Henkel reacts to the attack by Ohä with a price reduction and centres its entire advertising campaign on the fight with the new rival. On a poster, a happy housewife protests in a clear insinuation to Ohä: “... I'm staying with it!” Another advertisement cunningly asks: “Who is to blame for the confusion?” – and launches a harmless competition for housewives under the allusive title.
Countless advertisements try to refute the charge that Persil is too expensive. A campaign using verse and lasting several years makes a deliberately modest appearance. Simultaneously, however, Henkel distributes colour, glossy brochures and organises afternoon events for housewives with film presentations.
The Migros advertising seems rather paltry in comparison. But this is exactly Gottlieb Duttweiler’s intention. It gives him the opportunity to attack Henkel over the years and expose it. In 1945 in the Brückenbauer, he reminds readers: “This expensive propaganda has to be paid for, namely by the dear housewives who are taken in by the brand price.”