To teach how to push air out of plastic bottles and to develop good habits as early as possible, PepsiCo Poland created a game called Up Up Hippo. A smartphone game controlled by… a plastic bottle. By squeezing a plastic bottle children help Hippo move. They pump up his flat tire, release balloons, blow on his sail or let him fly. All to fulfil his recycling mission. The only thing they have to do is squeeze a plain plastic bottle. Or a few. No special devices or connections are needed.

We started tests days before the Earth Day. Kids’ reactions were outstanding, so we filmed the last day of tests and used it for communication. Then we used corporate PR, social and digital media to target adults, mainly parents. We used two different messages. The first one was all about family fun, Hippo and the game. Using Hippo as a hero in social media and digital campaign helped us to tell funny stories and launch the game. The second message, mainly PR directed, was more serious and focused on recycling, uncrushed bottles and education. PepsiCo Poland, as a major beverage producer, aims at increasing recycling rate and proper disposal of plastic containers. Up Up Hippo project complements this policy.

Each played game equals at least one properly crushed bottle. However, kids just love Up Up Hippo and play it all over again. During the tests every plastic bottle was crushed and flattened to the very last blow. The air-inspired design is so suggestive that many kids think that it is the real air from the bottle that makes Hippo move. An average kid, when allowed to, spends 30 minutes with the game, crushing over 50 plastic bottles. According to studies, only 68% of adults declare that they dispose of plastic containers properly (TNS Poland for Polish Ministry of Environment, November 2014). So far, 100% of kids that had contact with the game declared that they crush plastic bottles before throwing them away. But they didn’t just declare it. They did it!