A Toothpick Brand Moves Into a Supermarket to Win Attention
Updated: 6 days ago
The co-founder of Berlin toothpick brand Pick'em is livestreaming himself living inside a glass booth in an Edeka supermarket for days — a low-budget experiential stunt engineered for outsized attention.
A Stunt Built for Attention
Folkert Bowler, co-founder of Berlin toothpick brand Pick'em, is livestreaming himself living inside a glass booth in an Edeka supermarket for several days, HORIZONT reports. It is exactly the kind of scrappy, attention-first stunt that a challenger brand with more ambition than budget leans on to punch above its weight.
The genius is in the mismatch: a humble product — toothpicks — paired with an absurd, committed spectacle. That incongruity is precisely what makes people stop, share and talk. You cannot buy that kind of attention at a toothpick brand's media budget; you have to earn it.
Why Experiential Stunts Still Work
In an age of infinite scrollable content, a real-world happening with genuine stakes and duration cuts through. A multi-day livestream creates an ongoing story — people check back, wonder how he's coping, and bring others along. It manufactures the one thing attention economics rewards: a reason to keep watching.
Marketing Minute's read: the stunt works because it is inherently content. It generates footage, reactions and talking points for social, turning a single physical event into days of distributable material. Small brands that think in 'content engines' rather than one-off ads get far more from every euro.
The Retail-Partnership Angle
Setting the stunt inside an Edeka store is the clever structural choice. It ties the brand to a retail partner, creates footfall and a reason for the store to amplify, and plants Pick'em exactly where the purchase happens. Shopper marketing and spectacle fuse into one.
For any small brand, the lesson is to make your retail partners co-beneficiaries of your creativity. A stunt that drives shoppers into a store earns the retailer's support — and retailer amplification is reach a challenger brand could never afford alone.
What Small Brands Should Take From It
You do not need a big budget; you need a big, shareable idea and the nerve to commit to it. Pick'em's stunt is a reminder that constraint breeds creativity — the brands with the least money are often forced into the most memorable ideas.
The framework: find an idea bold enough to be worth talking about, anchor it to a partner who benefits from amplifying it, and design it as content from the start. Attention is earned by those willing to do what bigger, more cautious brands won't.
Quick FAQ
What is Pick'em's marketing stunt?
Co-founder Folkert Bowler is livestreaming himself living inside a glass booth in an Edeka supermarket for several days.
Why do stunts like this work for small brands?
They earn outsized attention a small media budget could never buy, and generate days of shareable content from a single event.
What is the role of the Edeka partnership?
It ties the brand to a retailer, drives footfall, and wins retailer amplification — reach a challenger brand could not afford alone.
You can't buy attention on a toothpick brand's budget — you have to earn it with an idea bold enough to be worth talking about. Living in a supermarket for days is absurd, committed and inherently content. Anchor that to a retail partner who benefits, and a tiny brand suddenly has reach the giants would envy. — Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing
Constraint breeds creativity: the brands with the least money are often forced into the most memorable ideas — design the stunt as content and tie it to a partner who'll amplify it.
What's the scrappiest marketing stunt you've seen actually work? We'd love to hear your favourite.
If you would like to know more about this topic, please contact us on danieln@merxmarketing.co.uk
Sources: HORIZONT.
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Written by Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing Ltd and Marketing Minute
