ARCHIVEYou Lose When You Overpay
The 'You Lose When You Overpay' campaign for G2A, created by Serviceplan, is a striking film medium...
Penny Declares Affordability Obvious in Serviceplan's 2021 Drag Campaign
Penny's 2021 campaign 'If You Want It Cheap' is a music-video-style television and online film produced by Serviceplan Campaign for the German grocery discount market, launched during Pride Month on June 19, 2021, starring German drag queen Olivia Jones and a cast of drag performers to dramatise the brand's core low-price proposition.
The campaign's German line, 'Wer günstig will, muss PENNY,' translates the English title into an unambiguous declaration: choosing Penny is simply the obvious move for price-conscious shoppers. Rather than present affordability as a compromise, Serviceplan reframes it as a source of joy, spectacle, and self-expression. The creative vehicle is a reinterpretation of the Hamburg song 'Das gibt's nur auf der Reeperbahn,' associated with the beloved German performer Heidi Kabel, reworked through a choreographic sensibility influenced by Todrick Hall's 'Nails, Hair, Lips, Heels.' That layering of local cultural heritage onto an internationally recognisable pop-drag format is deliberate: it speaks to German audiences with regional specificity while operating in a visual language that travels.
In Germany, Penny occupies the discount segment of one of Europe's most price-competitive grocery markets. The campaign's objective is to reinforce Penny as the intuitive first choice for shoppers who prioritise value, while simultaneously demonstrating, as the spot's creative direction insists, that budget shopping can be entertaining. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 56 out of 100, reflecting solid strategic coherence and an arresting creative concept, balanced against limited documented reach data and a production scope that remains partially undisclosed. Stefan Magel, Divisional Director Trading Germany at REWE Group and COO of PENNY, framed the brand's intent precisely: 'We have been successfully positioning ourselves as a neighbourhood discount store for years. Our message is: PENNY is for everyone. But we also want to show that saving can be fun and an exciting experience all on its own. We offer high-quality food at low prices every day.'
Germany's grocery retail sector is among the most discount-dominant in the developed world. Discount retailers accounted for approximately 42.2% of German food-retail sales in 2021, according to data cited by Scribd industry reports, placing Penny in direct competition with Aldi and Lidl, the two chains that effectively invented the hard-discount format and continue to define consumer expectations around low-price grocery shopping in the German market.
That competitive reality shapes the strategic challenge Serviceplan faced. In a landscape where Aldi and Lidl command deep shopper loyalty through price, and where Edeka Group, including Netto, reported approximately €68.835 billion in 2021 turnover according to data aggregated from trade sources, Penny must do more than match price points. It must own an attitude toward price. The campaign's central strategic insight is that affordability, presented without apology or spectacle, is table stakes in Germany. Penny's differentiation lies in making the choice feel emotionally satisfying rather than merely rational. By launching the campaign during Pride Month, Serviceplan signals that Penny's 'for everyone' positioning is not an abstract slogan. It is demonstrated through casting, music, and cultural reference. Christoph Everke, Creative Managing Director at Serviceplan Campaign, made the strategic intent explicit: 'Cheap doesn't have to be boring at all,' per reporting by Little Black Book Online. That statement is both a creative brief and a competitive repositioning move, distinguishing Penny from the more austere communications typical of hard-discount competitors.
The broader German retail market recorded approximately €618 billion in total retail sales in 2021, up approximately 3.1% year over year, according to Apps Fas Usda Gov. Within that context, food retail represented a significant and fiercely contested segment, making any campaign that builds genuine emotional brand equity an outsized strategic asset for a discount chain seeking to retain shoppers beyond pure price comparison.
Penny's 'If You Want It Cheap' campaign takes the form of a full music-video-style film, a production format that demands sustained creative commitment across performance, choreography, costume, and sound design. The centrepiece casting decision is German drag queen Olivia Jones, a recognisable cultural figure in Germany with strong associations with Hamburg's Reeperbahn district, which connects directly to the song source material the campaign reinterprets. Jones leads a cast of drag performers whose energy and visual presence carry the spot's argument that cheap can be joyful, loud, and unashamed.
The creative team assembled for this production included director Mirko Hampel and was produced through Neverest and Goodhouse Films, as documented in production credits associated with the campaign. Additional creative and production contributors named in the campaign records include Namoto GmbH, Ines Kossack, Tanja Kerner, Timon Patris, and Maximilian Olowinsky, reflecting a collaboratively structured production pipeline typical of ambitious German advertising films.
The musical foundation is the Hamburg folk song 'Das gibt's nur auf der Reeperbahn,' associated with Heidi Kabel and deeply embedded in northern German popular memory. Its reworking through the choreographic idiom of Todrick Hall's 'Nails, Hair, Lips, Heels' is a culturally precise decision: it grounds the campaign in something local and sentimental while applying a contemporary pop-drag energy that makes it feel current and shareable. The result is a film that functions simultaneously as a brand advertisement, a Pride Month statement, and a piece of entertainment with genuine production ambition. For a retail spot in the discount category, that tonal range is genuinely unusual, and it reflects Serviceplan Campaign's consistent willingness to invest creative scale in Penny's communications, a relationship that stretches back to the brand's widely circulated 2018 Christmas film, which generated more than 22 million total YouTube views according to data cited by Selfstorming.
Verified performance data for the 'If You Want It Cheap' campaign beyond archive-level engagement is limited in public documentation. The campaign's listing on Clapboard records 2,672 archive views, 10 likes, and zero comments, figures that reflect archival engagement rather than campaign reach or media delivery in the German market. No third-party verified figures for broadcast reach, digital view counts on the brand's own channels, or sales uplift attributable to the campaign are publicly available at the time of writing.
Structural analysis, however, supports a measured reading of the campaign's effectiveness. The decision to launch during Pride Month is strategically timed to earn organic media attention and social amplification beyond paid placement, a mechanism that Serviceplan has employed on behalf of Penny to extend reach without proportionate media spend. The casting of Olivia Jones brings an existing audience and cultural credibility that functions as earned reach. The music-video format is natively shareable in a way that conventional retail advertising is not. These structural features suggest the campaign was designed to outperform its paid media footprint, though without published data it is not possible to confirm whether it did so. The Clapboard Score of 56 out of 100 reflects this duality: a campaign that is strategically coherent, creatively distinctive, and culturally legible, but whose documented impact in the German retail market remains partially unverified. For a discount retailer competing against Aldi and Lidl in one of Europe's most price-saturated grocery environments, the campaign's willingness to invest in cultural capital rather than pure price messaging represents a meaningful, if measured, strategic step.
Penny's 'If You Want It Cheap' is a 2021 German retail campaign created by Serviceplan Campaign. It launched during Pride Month featuring drag queen Olivia Jones in a music-video-style film reinterpreting a Hamburg folk song, positioning Penny as the obvious and joyful choice for affordable everyday grocery shopping in Germany.
Mirko Hampel directed the campaign film. Production was handled through Neverest and Goodhouse Films, with additional contributors including Namoto GmbH, Ines Kossack, Tanja Kerner, Timon Patris, and Maximilian Olowinsky. The campaign was created by Serviceplan Campaign for Penny and launched in Germany in June 2021.
Penny launched during Pride Month to give tangible meaning to its 'PENNY is for everyone' brand positioning. Casting drag queen Olivia Jones and a drag ensemble demonstrated inclusivity through creative action rather than slogan, while also earning organic media attention in the competitive German discount grocery market against rivals including Aldi and Lidl.
The Clapboard Score for Penny's 'If You Want It Cheap' campaign is 56 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strategic coherence and creative distinctiveness within Germany's discount retail sector, balanced against limited publicly verified performance data and partially undisclosed production scope, per Clapboard's editorial assessment.
Rather than competing on price communication alone against Aldi and Lidl, Penny and Serviceplan reframe affordability as emotionally rewarding. Christoph Everke of Serviceplan stated that cheap does not have to be boring, per Little Black Book Online, a positioning that distinguishes Penny through attitude and cultural energy rather than price point alone.
The campaign reinterprets 'Das gibt's nur auf der Reeperbahn,' a Hamburg folk song associated with German performer Heidi Kabel. Serviceplan reworked it through a choreographic style influenced by Todrick Hall's 'Nails, Hair, Lips, Heels,' blending German regional cultural heritage with contemporary pop-drag energy for the 2021 Pride Month launch.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
.jpg&w=256&q=75)
