Uncommon’s Ecover ad gets simple messaging right

A new press series for Ecover, by Uncommon Creative Studio, depicts clothing labels with sustainable washing instructions encouraging readers to ‘wash less' and its minimalist stylings help enhance the message.

Ecover has always been a brand focused on sustainability, and its latest campaign’s appeal for people to ‘wash less’ and think more consciously about their laundry habits feels in keeping with the brand’s legacy.

The ad follows the launch of ‘The Rewear Chair’, a piece of sustainable furniture design, created by Uncommon to encourage people to reduce the environmental impact of overwashing clothes.

The chair takes inspiration from a memetic observation that ‘the chair’ is a common intermediary between the wardrobe and the washing machine. And who can’t relate to that?

Our take

Encouraging sustainable behaviour is arguably one of the most important challenges of our time. The trouble is, it can come off a bit ‘preachy’, which hardly plays well to brand building.

Enter Uncommon and Ecover, whose adverts utilise relatability and humour to champion easy to implement lifestyle tweaks. The Rewear Chair (which will be presented at Dutch Design Week taking place in Eindhoven from 19-27 October 2024) is, of course, somewhat tongue in cheek. The meta message however, is to draw attention to a productive habit.

We’re also fans of the simplicity of Ecover’s print ads, which rethink a common mundanity - clothing labels - and subvert their utility for sustainable purposes. The clothing used in the ads is also very bright, and of the moment, giving a contemporary feel to the campaign.

More broadly, it seems this campaign took inspiration from organic observations on social media, which prompted memes about ‘the chair’. We reckon this trend (creatives taking their nods from viral memes) will only grow and grow. The trick, of course, is to react quickly enough while the meme is still fresh. Congrats to Ecover for getting on the bandwagon before it ran out of steam.