Though Ag’s products are stylish, people buy them more for their Earth-friendly story than for their design. But we realized the most important part of that story was missing: For every person who buys an Ag bag, there’s a person who donated a tube used to make it. So we created a system to connect those two people – the bag owner and their ‘donor’ – turning a recycling story into a meaningful human connection.

We began with the Seattle to Portland bicycle race in July of 2015. There, we set up a collection area for people to drop off their blown tubes and tell us their donor stories. We then entered the stories onto the Ag donor website and began integrating the stories into the manufacturing process. Products started selling in December of 2015 and posters were hung in local bicycle retail stores in January of 2016.

We have not yet received results due to the soft-launch nature of the campaign.

This isn't just an advertising campaign. We fundamentally changed the way our client does business by introducing the people who buy their products to the people who donate the material used to make those products.

Ag customers like to support companies that use environmentally friendly practices. They typically support those kinds of practices not just because they want to help the environment, but because they like to have an interesting story to tell about the products they buy. Our campaign gave them a much richer story to tell than just a recycling story.

Alchemy Goods (Ag) collects used bicycle tubes and turns them into shoulder bags and accessories. Their products are available online and in over 300 retail outlets around the USA. With no media money, we needed to find a way to organically spread the word and build awareness for Alchemy Goods.