#189 2025 · Ziploc · Consumer packaged goods / retail promotionspair-two-problems
Ziploc let shoppers redeem their expired coupons — as long as a Ziploc bag was in the cart
the problem
Expired coupons are pure loss for shoppers and a dead end for the brands that issued them
background
Grocery coupons expire constantly, and once they do, retailers and manufacturers treat them as gone — the standard response is a reminder email before expiration, or nothing at all after. For shoppers, an expired coupon is a small, forgettable loss; for brands, it's a missed transaction and a slightly worse opinion of the retailer, with no mechanism to recover either side of that.
Ziploc, a preservation brand by category — bags and containers people buy specifically to keep things from expiring — had no obvious operational connection to coupon logistics. But the metaphor was sitting right there: a brand whose entire product category is about not letting things go to waste, applied to a kind of waste nobody had thought to preserve.
the move
Ziploc built PreservedPromos.com: shoppers upload a photo of any expired food coupon — competitor brand or Ziploc's own, from any retailer — and receive a new discount worth up to $4, redeemable at major retailers, on the condition that a Ziploc product is in the cart at checkout.
the payoff
A 14% increase in new buyers, a 49% redemption rate, a 61% increase in Ziploc's share of voice, and participation from more than 80 retail partners spanning over 65,000 stores, according to both official sources read for this case.
what came after
'Preserved Promos' won the Creative Commerce Grand Prix and four additional Cannes Lions in 2025, and is cited in retail-marketing coverage as a model for converting a universal, brand-agnostic annoyance — expired coupons — into a proprietary customer-acquisition channel.
references
- [1]PR Newswire — SC Johnson Wins Grand Prix and Five Cannes Lions for Ziploc 'Preserved Promos' CampaignPR Newswire, 2025prnewswire.com
- [2]WPP — VML: Ziploc's Preserved PromosWPP, 2025wpp.com