Unforgettable Bag

Agency

Grey KL

Client

Tesco

Product/Service

Tesco

Brief

Malaysians use on average 300 plastic bags per year, 9 billion bags in total, the vast majority are single use.  Tesco Malaysia halved the number of single-use plastic bags between 2011 and 2017, but the rate of reduction is not fast enough. Other Tesco’s, like the UK, have already banned single-use, but Malaysian education and attitudes lag behind.  BRIEF: Accelerate the reduction in single use bags and help position Tesco as a leading sustainability champion and help build the path to total ban by 2020.  OBJECTIVE: Encourage customers to bring back the bags for every time they shop. Educate customers on the impact of plastic bags Help to significantly change long-term behaviour to allow for the eventual phasing out of single use bags

Solution

This is about creating behaviour change on a mass scale. Instead of punishing people for forgetting to bring a bag, let’s reward them for bringing them back. By adding a simple change to the design, a barcode, we transform the bag into an ongoing discount, an incentive. Creating a regular, habit forming reward that actively changes behaviour. 

Currently Tesco has over 30 re-usable bag designs, all useful but mostly ignored. We simply adapted an existing bag. No new set up costs, simply changing the 1 colour print design of their cheapest and most accessible re-usable bag.

Launched across all 56 stores nationwide, the bag is already the best selling re-usable bag in the network.

On average, just 5% of customers currently re-use bags.  Within first month 68% of UB’s were re-used - 14 x more effective.  At current rate, at least 5 million bags will be saved by end of 2018.

The IP is open-source and has been requested by Tescos in UK, Thailand & India for their own launches