So I was talking to a client yesterday about packaging [a subject I bloody love] and the discussion turned to a promotion I was involved with for Dutch coffee brand, Douwe Egberts.
About 8 years ago, we got a brief to develop an idea that would drive sales [how original] … however they were insistent anything we did had to be appropriate to the ‘essence of the brand’ – so they didn’t want to see any ‘left-field’ concepts and/or an over-reliance on brightly coloured ‘starbursts’, haha!
Anyway, given their brand idea was ‘A Relaxing Moment’ [I know, clichéd as fuck … but we inherited it so had to make of it what we could!] we decided that rather than do the bog-standard ‘WIN A HOLIDAY/BED/MASSAGE/WANK [mainly because loads of brands do that sort of thing [well, not the wank!] so it’s effectiveness is questionable PLUS you tend to be ‘buying’ customers rather than building any real loyalty] … the best thing we could do was find a way that PROVED Douwe Egberts created ‘relaxing moments’ rather than rely on cliché ‘lifestyle advertising’ and/or ‘borrowed interest’.
Well that was all well and good in theory … however we didn’t have the faintest idea what to do, so after poncing around for fucking ages, we finally came up with an idea that we liked.
To cut a VERY long story short, we got Bodum [the designer kitchenware company] to re-create all of Douwe Egberts outer packaging so that after use, it would become [dependent on the product purchased] a fashionable drinking glass, a tea-light holder, an aromatherapy kit and/or a vase – things that not only helped create ‘a relaxing moment’, but were items you’d actually want to keep/use.
Sure it increased overall packaging production costs – but the end result was a differentiated brand offering that returned – if memory serves me right – sales increase of around 40%.
[Of course the client who approved the idea left soon after and their replacement hated the concept so sacked us and went back to WIN A HOLIDAY/BED/MASSAGE/WANK … but that’s not important right now, hahaha]
Anyway, this got me thinking …
What if we pressured companies to stop talking about re-cycling and the environment … and pushed them to change their packaging so it could be used in an alternate manner when finished with?
I’m not talking about something crappy like a poopa-scooper or paper plate … but something that has real desirable appeal, like the Bodum stuff we did, but obviously appropriate to the individual brands consumer.
I know some brands out there do it … but it is still the exception and even then, quite often only part of a short-term promotion.
The thing is, it’s all too easy for brands to ‘talk’ about being ‘environmentally conscious but it doesn’t really mean much unless they prove it.
OK … making packaging recyclable is a good start, however [1] its often a small gesture and [2] the responsibility of the ‘recycling’ is still primarily on the shoulders of the ‘user’.
Maybe if we pushed companies to think more interms of REUSABLE rather than RECYCLABLE, then we’d be helping the environment [and the brand] to a far greater level than many of the current corporate practices could ever hope for – though I could be talking bollocks, afterall quite a few people this week have been saying as much, hahaha!
PS: Can someone tell me if South Australia still offers ‘money back’ for aluminium cans taken to a recycling bay?