Our idea was an unusual one. Not an ordinary print ad, but a small insert that could actually be used to recycle the magazine. No longer needing photography, we put the production budget into buying prepaid postage. So all that people would have to do is peel off the label’s backing, stick it on the front cover, and drop it into their nearest post box – which are commonplace in South Africa, unlike formal recycle bins. Our expectation was for an approximately 5% response rate.

The objective was to create a new print campaign for Volkswagen BlueMotion – the more eco-conscious arm of VW. But the insight we had was that magazines clutter up people’s homes, and then eventually end up in landfills, meaning that all the print advertising inside them (including ours) contributes to paper wastage. So our strategy was to ask ourselves a simple question: can a print ad help save paper, not waste it?

We paid for an insert, but the whole magazine became part of the BlueMotion message. Although currently just in one region, with early reports suggesting a roughly 9% response rate so far (nearly double the 5% expected), we’re in discussions to expand The BlueMotion Label to other regions of the country. Ironically, the smallest Volkswagen print ad we’ve ever made may have the largest potential to make a real difference.

Every BlueMotion car contains a number of small, considered changes that reduce the vehicle’s impact on the environment. By helping our audience reduce their impact with a little label, our insert could really be described as ‘the BlueMotion philosophy applied to print’.

Just by using the existing infrastructure, a small print insert turned ordinary post boxes into a network of makeshift recycle bins. It’s that kind of thinking (reviewing the way things are normally done, to make them more efficient) that lies at the heart of the BlueMotion brand.