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BEING GREEN 1: REUSABLE PACKAGING
There are two reasons to put your products into useful, reusable packaging. One is that it doesn’t go into landfi ll because people will keep it, and the other is that things with your brand name on will hang around for longer.
The idea The Japanese package things beautifully, but can get carried away with layer upon layer of delightful but expensive presentation. For example, you might be offered bean paste sweets with a wrapping of cellophane covering beautiful paper wrapped around a box that contains individually double wrapped confectionery. This is a relatively modern move. Traditionally, the Japanese would present their gifts in a woven cloth; you would unwrap them, then give the cloth, called a furushiki, back to the giver. The cosmetics company Lush has built its reputation of making solid products which need the very minimum of packaging, so they can spend their budget on lovely natural materials instead of containers. Most cosmetics costs are 80% packaging/20% materials. At Lush it’s 0–20% packaging/80–100% materials. As Lush became successful in Japan, their Japanese staff felt uncomfortable selling unpackaged products as it’s rude not to wrap products, and even worse to present naked gifts. This was obviously an issue that needed to be solved, as Japan was overtaking the UK as Lush’s biggest market. The Japanese gifts team presented the idea
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