Most coupons expire before anyone uses them. The feeling when you pull out a coupon at checkout, and the cashier tells you it stopped working three days ago, is a specific, minor, but genuinely frustrating domestic defeat. Ziploc and VML New York identified that frustration as the most precise available proof of the brand’s core product argument and built a commerce platform from it.
The Insight
Ziploc’s product promise is preservation. The brand makes bags, containers, and storage solutions designed to extend the useful life of things that would otherwise expire, go stale, or be thrown away. Food waste and savings loss share the same cause: expiration. The creative team at VML identified that parallel and made it the campaign’s mechanism. If Ziploc preserves food, it should preserve your savings too.
The Activation
Preserved Promos is a mobile-first commerce activation that gave expired coupons a second life. Shoppers who had missed the expiry date on any food promotion, regardless of brand, could upload a photo or screenshot of the invalid coupon to the Ziploc platform. The system validated it and applied an extended offer for a future food purchase on one condition: the shopper had to buy Ziploc products alongside it.
The user experience was deliberately frictionless. Upload the expired coupon. Receive the extended offer. Redeem it at checkout alongside Ziploc. The entire flow was designed to convert a moment of disappointment at the checkout into a positive brand interaction, with Ziploc positioned as the thing that fixed what had already gone wrong.
The scale of retail participation gave the activation genuine commercial reach. More than 80 retail partners and over 65,000 physical store locations across the United States participated in the programme, making the Preserved Promos redemption available at essentially every major grocery and convenience retail environment in the country.
The Results
The campaign delivered a 61% increase in share of voice. Sales rose 5%. 14% of buyers who redeemed Preserved Promos were first-time Ziploc customers, a new buyer acquisition figure driven entirely by a commerce mechanic rather than conventional advertising. The redemption rate across the campaign period reached 49%, a figure significantly above industry benchmarks for promotional activations and reflecting the directness of the value proposition.
The commercial case confirms what the creative premise assumed. A shopper who had already decided to use a coupon and found it expired is one of the most commercially motivated audiences available to a preservation brand. They were already trying to save money. Ziploc arrived at the exact moment that ambition had just failed and offered to make it work again. The conversion rate followed from that timing.
The Cannes Recognition
Preserved Promos won the Creative Commerce Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2025, competing against the Commerce Lions’ most directly commercial category. Manuel Borde, Chief Creative Officer of VML, accepted the award as the culmination of a creative strategy built around converting a universal domestic frustration into a measurable brand asset. The campaign appears in the Cannes Lions Grand Prix Winners 2025 collection on Ads of the World.
Why the Idea Works Beyond the Category
Preserved Promos is the cleanest recent example of a campaign where the product’s own argument and the campaign’s mechanic are the same thing. Ziploc does not have to explain why preservation matters in an abstract sense. It preserved something the shopper was already trying to use and had already lost. The demonstration happened at the moment of purchase, in the precise commercial context where trust in a preservation brand is most worth building.
The campaign also solved a structural problem in grocery retail that affects multiple parties simultaneously. Retailers who participate gain foot traffic from shoppers who might otherwise abandon the basket after the disappointment of an expired coupon. Ziploc gains new buyers who experienced the brand as a problem-solver rather than a product. The shopper recovers their savings. The mechanism benefits everyone in the transaction.
Campaign Name: Preserved Promos
Agency Name: VML / VMLY&R New York
Brand Name: Ziploc (SC Johnson)
Location: United States (national; 80+ retail partners, 65,000+ physical store locations)
