THE FIRST EVER DIAPER RECYCLING PROGRAM
A HISTORICAL RELATIONSHIP TO BUILD FUTURE SUCCESS
Nomads has proudly held a ten year relationship with Pampers, P&G’s biggest brand. Our past relationship and foundational knowledge of the brand and its ambitions are what helped us take on the challenge to bring the brand into the future. This time, to not only help solve a communication problem, but to help evolve the brand’s digital output. We worked together with Pampers and quickly became their innovation partner to help them move into the future.
Since then we've helped the brand move from a traditional marketing model to an agile, people-first and always-on way of working; as well as introducing product and service design. Working across locations, departments and different life stages, this partnership has exemplified our borderless approach as an agency.
MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE
P&G Pampers have invested heavily in developing technology to recycle 100% of used diapers into new industrial materials. After being their strategic and creative partners for 10 years and becoming experts in Mums’ behaviours and needs, we were brought in as innovation partners to create and manage the design of this revolutionary diaper recycling program. In order to launch a fully functioning global recycling program, Pampers needed to gauge interest in diaper recycling and understand parents’ current behaviours.
BEHAVIOURAL DESIGN
A soft launch of the pilot attracted an initial group of parents, our advocates, to the program. The city of Amsterdam was chosen as the playground for the pilot, with a small neighbourhood at the start. The focus then shifted to acquire and retain a more mainstream audience — a consumer segment we identified in our research as the “feel gooders”, which make up the majority of parents with babies in diapers in Amsterdam, all while retaining our early adopters.
DESIGNING THE BINS
After research into what kind of recycling bins would appeal to parents and how we could drive awareness, we helped design and develop our own. To ensure we captured mom’s attention, the bins were placed outside different daycare centres and several drugstores where moms usually buy diapers from.
DEVELOPING THE APP
Key to the program is the app users needed to open the recycling bins and deposit their diapers. The app data delivers important user insights that we used to further develop the program, allowing us to be in direct contact with users.
SPREADING THE WORD
If we can give people an understanding of how much they recycle and what actually happens to the recycled diapers, there’s a bigger chance they’ll join our initiative and keep recycling.
To drive awareness of the pilot and get parents to rethink what they do with used diapers, we developed a powerful call to action for them to think about the impact their daily actions have on their baby’s future. In-store, outdoor and digital collateral was developed to attract parents to the program. Posters placed near the bins in drugstores highlighted the impact parents can have on their baby’s future, simply by recycling diapers.
WHERE IS IT NOW?
Today, the pilot is running in four neighbourhoods in Amsterdam with 84% of the people who signed up for the program having actively recycled. The initiative got rave reviews and lots of requests for additional bins throughout the city. It was covered by most major media outlets in the Netherlands. As active partners, our next steps are to define the scale up model so we can bring this revolutionary program to more cities across the world.
