2020 Winner
2020 Winners
East West Market
Embarrassing Plastic Bags
Around the world, more than one million single-use plastic bags are used every minute—most of which are filled once, then discarded. Vancouver’s East West Market, a small grocer, is known for going out of their way to adopt sustainable practices. Their largest competitors, renowned grocery store chains, were also promoting sustainable tactics to incentivize green behaviour from customers. However, despite the Canadian government and organizations setting goals to reduce plastic waste, these chains weren’t doing enough to disrupt consumers convenience-seeking ways. So, East West Market, a small local retailer, decided to take things into their own hands to do something their corporate counterparts weren’t.
Despite good intentions, the majority of shoppers hadn’t overcome the habit of forgetting their reusable bags at home. East West conceived a new way to help shoppers remember to bring their reusable bags the next time they visited the store. Our solution: Embarrassing Plastic Bags.
Our goal with the Embarrassing Plastic Bags campaign was to change the behaviour of consumers and reinvigorate conversation about the environmental implications of plastic bags.
Insights & Strategy
We began our research by examining existing consumer habits: A 2017 study found that while 97.5% of shoppers agree that plastic bags harm the environment, 76.25% will still use them. Clearly, this was not an awareness issue, it was behavioural.
According to Harvard behavioural scientists, social influence has the power to persuade consumers to adopt greener practices. This led us to the driving insight that judgement has a greater influence on an individuals behaviour than their own social conscience. We brought this insight to life through a strategy that revolved around a solution-based approach to elevate the public embarrassment already associated with single-use plastic bags.
Execution
We redesigned all of East West Market’s plastic bags to make people embarrassed to carry them. If customers forgot their reusable bags, they would be forced to use a plastic one that featured fake stores like, “Dr. Toews' Wart Ointment Wholesale”, “The Colon Care Co-op”, or “Into the Weird Adult Video Emporium”. These bags were meant to look bold and stand out. By redesigning the plastic bags, customers were not only charged as per East West Market’s policy, but they were forced to walk the streets with these embarrassing plastic bags.
With no media budget to work with, we had to get creative to spread the word. We wanted the story to originate from people who were shocked to receive these bags. Images of the plastic bags started being shared on social media. After more posts started to surface, we began pitching these social posts as story pieces to digital-first publications. The pick-up was instant, and from there, the excitement began to spread to news outlets around the world.
Results & Impact
After the campaign, 96% of East West customers brought reusable bags instead of plastic. This was almost 20% greater than the 76.25% grocery retail average. But, it didn’t stop there. Once the story broke, the local grocery store sparked a global conversation. The bags created a dialogue with the public and were featured in the New York Times, People, NPR, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Huffington Post Canada, and over 300 other publications worldwide. The campaign was even championed by big names like Kevin Bacon, Stephen Fry, Jessica Hische, and George Takei.
But it wasn’t just awareness, we created action. The bags became part of the narrative when the Canadian government announced a ban on single use plastics. In press coverage of the Prime Minister’s announcement, the bags were featured as an example of how Canadian brands are making change.
By adding a dose of shame to a traditional plastic bag, we were able to drastically reduce plastic bag use in-store and help people around the world think twice about single-use plastic.