Bags of Hype: The Anya Hindmarch Universal Bag Campaign
Picture this, I’m frantically running through my local Tesco on a Friday morning, searching up and down the aisles for what feels like gold dust. Finally, right at the back of the store I see them, and my heart races. I’ve found the Anya Hindmarch Universal Bags. What a rush.
None of us are immune to hype, no matter how much we try to resist it, seemingly the more useful the product, the more the hype gets us. So when I saw the Anya Hindmarch Instagram account confirm the next location of the Universal Bag, I was pretty rapidly all over it.
What is the Universal Bag you ask? It’s a collaboration between luxury designer Anya Hindmarch and several of our national supermarkets. What started with Waitrose, has led to collaborations with Asda, The Coop, and now, most recently, Tesco.
The concept behind the bag is to create a stylish alternative to the bag for life, which we have all been transitioning to since the single-use plastic bag became chargeable in 2015. Hindmarch, known for her creative and playful styles has captured the essence of the individual stores within their colour palette and paired it with her classic playful smiley faces. Quite simply, they feel stylish and they’re actually really bloomin’ useful.
Sustainability
The Universal Bag is the first bag for life to offer a 10-year guarantee, which feels wildly impressive considering most of them come with little to no replacement guarantee. Innovatively the inside pocket can be used to fold the bag into and has the free-post return address printed on it. According to the website, your bag will be recycled in the UK and you will receive a replacement.
The bag itself has swayed away from the eco-it girl tote bag cotton material and opted to be made from recycled plastic, which at first glance may feel like a step back, however, the practicality has been explained. The truth is, plastic bags are useful when doing the weekly shop, being leakproof, and cleanable Anya explains that “fits the purpose of the weekly shop. You can put it down on the street while waiting for the bus” (source: The Guardian).
Since the introduction of the 5p charge on single-use plastic bags in 2015, the government has noted there has been a 95% dip in their usage in main supermarkets. The market for reusable bags for life, however, has been on the up.
The Campaign
Now this is not a new campaign, Anya Hindmarch has been collaborating with supermarkets for a few years now. With the Sainsbury's bag being released in late 2021 as a launch pad, since then we’ve seen the Waitrose colours adorned, Co-op and now it’s the turn of Tesco and Morrisons.
The campaign itself is clever and relatively low-key, these universal bags have become somewhat of a cult item, with resellers making 2-3 times profit on the likes of Ebay and Vinted. So how are these bags being marketed to us?
As we mentioned, it is a low-key campaign, due to the existing hype around these releases, the Anya Hindmarch brand and the individual supermarkets are able to reply on mostly organic social media, influencer marketing, and of course, good old-fashioned word-of-mouth.
The brands themselves amass huge followings, so a sneaky teaser post is enough to get their audiences to mark the dates in their calendars to flock to the supermarkets. As I noted when I went to get my very own bag, the staff themselves are well in the know of the popularity. One friendly member of staff noted that I should probably pick up multiple and sell them on Vinted for double the price (reader, please note, I did refrain from doing this, after the hell that was buying Taylor Swift tickets a few weeks ago I vowed never to make things harder for others to get their prize products at source!)
Immediately after buying the said bag, I texted all my friends to let them know they needed it and posted a snap to social media. So I guess it just goes to show, what a good bit of hype can do to push a campaign right?
What this campaign shows us
Campaigns like the Universal Bag really show us a couple of things, namely: a good collaboration is everything, and well-matched brands can produce some impressive campaign results and most importantly, the importance of social media buzz to drive hype.
Let’s tap into that second point, all too often organic social is seen as a ‘nice to have’ rather than an essential part of your marketing plan. We know that email campaigns are fantastic revenue drivers and paid social allows you to assign cost per clicks, but without organic social flanking these activities you cannot leave room for genuine human interaction.
There is no greater success in a campaign than the positive sentiment from your audience, having them digitally share their great experience and implore others to follow along in their footsteps.
How can you take learnings from this campaign into your next campaign you ask? When assigning your activity, make sure to consider organic social. Gently heating up your audience in advance with teasers, and engaging feedback activity can be a huge benefit to your campaign launch.
In summary, it’s a joy for marketers like us at The Doers to see such great campaigns thriving. From its sustainability efforts to watching customer excitement - it’s truly a genuine and brilliant campaign which we can all take a lot of learnings from.
P.S. Keep an eye out for the newest Morrisons edition launching in September 2023.
This post was written by our Doer, Allie. If you need Social Media advice or help, do be sure to book a 30-minute discovery call.
