Lely Red ©

By the way, did you know that the colour is even officially registered and that nobody else is allowed to make a red milking robot? It is not easy to obtain trademark rights to a colour. Other examples include UPS brown and John Deere's combination of yellow and green.

I've ‘Lely-ed’ my land

As the years have gone by, our slogans have also been fine-tuned. For example, five years ago we went from 'Innovators in agriculture' to 'Farming innovators'. Sometimes customers also had interesting ideas. For instance, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Lely Terra power harrow was our main product. The Lely Terra made the soil 'ready for sowing' by means of rotating tines. The product was enormously successful, as farmers now only had to make two passes across their land instead of three. Farmers thought it was such a tough product that they even tested whether the tines could penetrate asphalt. And they did. But the best thing of all was that, at some point, farmers started using Lely as a verb. This gave rise to the statement: 'I've Lely-ed my land'. We never used it as a slogan, but at least this means we’ve done something good, right? And how nice it would be if, in future, farmers would say: 'I've Lely-ed my cows'?

To be distinctive 
thanks to red

Blue has always been the colour of the milk industry, in combination with stainless steel. That combination stands for hygiene. DeLaval has always been blue and until the 1990s that was not a problem. At that time, we mainly produced agricultural machinery. But with the introduction of the milking robot and the shift to dairy farming, DeLaval became our biggest competitor and 'our' blue had to make way for red. So while red was once everyone's colour, it is now the exact colour that makes us stand out from the rest.

Red: the colour of danger

Lely is a strong brand, of which I am extremely proud. Everyone knows us by the the colour red. If you see red in a barn, many farmers automatically think ‘Lely’. But did you know that in the past, you didn’t stand out at all if you were red? Almost all agricultural machinery was red, because you had to be able to recognise danger – these big machines – from a long way off. Slowly but surely, the colour changed. Brands wanted to distinguish themselves.

The logo has always remained red. However, at one point, we were looking for a 'marketing colour'. That became blue, as you can see on this brochure. Blue was my father's favourite colour, hence the choice. It was as simple as that.

Lely is set to celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2023. In preparation for this festive year, which we will certainly be celebrating together, I’ve already been reminded of some great memories that tie in with the theme of this magazine: customer experience and how do people perceive our brand?