The twelfth blog: Bokma

Today I decided to analyze a local brand (for me). It’s called Bokma and comes from The Netherlands. You probably noticed I am dutch by my incoherent rambling before, alas feel free to make childish comments about legal weed and clogs in the comments below.

Bokma. The name comes from the surname of the Bokma family. Freerk Klazes Bokma was granted permission to establish a distillery on De Tuinen in Leeuwarden in 1894. He operated this business in addition to his bakery shop. This is where Bokma was destilled for many years.

Bokma has a rich history when it comes to advertising which I will talk about in this blog. In 1900 Pieter Bokma recognised the importance of advertising your brand. The company’s financial records show that Pieter invested heavily in advertising from the very beginning. Bottles and crates were labelled ‘P.Bokma, distillateur, Leeuwarden’ and, from 1904, simply ‘P.Bokma, Leeuwarden’. The importance of advertising increased after World War II. The advertising of Bokma Genever received increasingly more attention after the takeover by Heineken, resulting in several memorable advertising slogans, like: “Bokma, the best thing under the cork”, “Square in the bottle, round on the tongue” and ” Sweetheart, is the Bokma cold?”.

Commercial:

In this commercial we see a man which car is broken. He pushes it towards the nearest telephone cell and the when you think he is about to call for help, he calls his wife and says “Schat, staat de Bokma koud?” which is dutch for the aformentioned slogan “Sweetheart, is the Bokma cold?”. The humor in this commercial is that nobody thinks about Bokma when he has a car breakdown and this man does. He puts his worries about his Bokma getting warm before actually seeking help with his car.