Winner: IKEA & Lippe Taylor
Campaign: Bag the Plastic Bag
Consider this statistic: Hung on a clothesline, the 70-million plastic shopping bags that IKEA and its U.S. customers use in one year would stretch from New York to Los
Angeles...five times.
With that visual in mind, and in an effort to use materials more wisely to reduce possible harm to the environment, IKEA became the first major U.S. retailer to bag the use
of free plastic bags at check-out counters in all of its U.S. stores. Customers are now charged 5 cents per plastic bag, and 100% of proceeds are donated to American Forests, a
nonprofit conservation organization that protects and restores forests.
IKEA teamed with Lippe Taylor to generate positive awareness of the campaign among consumers, media and key influencers, including environmental non-government organizations
(NGOs), while supporting its environmental commitment at the same time.
Discontinuing Distribution
IKEA and Lippe Taylor kicked off the campaign by conducting a Beta launch in one IKEA outlet and then sharing the positive results and key lessons with all its stores.
Then, the team secured support from the Environmental Protection Agency and NGOs in an effort to reduce the risk of being accused of "green washing"--misleading consumers
regarding the motivation behind green business strategies--prior to going public with the project.
The communications team created a consumer-friendly message by using the iconic blue IKEA bag as a media-friendly symbol of the company's plastic bag consumption reduction
program; in conjunction with this effort, they compiled data to educate media and consumers about the negative impact plastic bags have on the environment.
Blue Baggin' It
The early statistics surrounding the campaign's success are staggering. The "Bag the Plastic Bag" campaign cut plastic bag consumption in US IKEA stores by 50% in six months.
Sales of reusable IKEA blue bags have been re-forecast for 2007 from 300,000 to 3.4 million.
Distributing plastic bag statistics and partnering with NGOs and key opinion leaders to endorse the campaign helped generate more than 281 million media impressions to date,
including Time, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
To top it all off, the campaign raised $150,000 from plastic bag sales for American Forests in the first six months of its existence.