Last Sunday (December 8th), Unilever beauty brand, Love Beauty and Planet took out an ad in the New York Times. That’s nothing new, of course – most brands advertise in the newspaper.
Where the ad made a difference is that it was intended as a gift wrap for the upcoming festive season!
The ad was designed by illustrator Leah Duncan.
The brand was created with a philosophy of “good for beauty and good for the planet“. So, it made contextual sense for them to create a center-spread ad that can be used as gift wrap!
On a weekend, the New York Times’ circulation is about 4.5 million! So, 4.5 million people could potentially be using the gift wrap ad and promoting the Love Beauty and Planet brand! That’s like generating word of mouth through a print ad, and using people to be your brand’s promoters! While they are at it, they are also cognizant of the fact that this gift wrap will turn their branded material into garbage eventually. People who get gifts wrapped in this sheet are most likely to see perhaps see it once out of curiosity (and may recall the brand) and then throw it away. This is not very different from the fact that the newspaper itself is garbage by the end of the day, every single day.
This dual-use was something some brands utilized when they created a 12-month calendar and offered it through the newspaper during the last weeks of a year or the first week of a new year. If we use it, we get to see the brand all through the year. Unfortunately, the smartphone killed the printed calendar newspaper insert.
But there’s another brand that made a purposeful dual-use print double-spread and it was very clever too, fully knowing that their ad is bound to be thrown away as garbage after ‘usage’! I had written about it earlier this year.