ADVERTISING AGENCY Lowe has been receiving multiple awards from top international advertising award bodies for its Eco Bag campaign for SM. The latest was last month’s silver award and three bronze awards by Spikes held in Singapore, after its Cannes, Tinta and Clio awards.

Leigh Reyes, president and creative officer of Lowe, revealed that Lowe has been working with SM Malls on various campaigns that communicate corporate social responsibility. She enumerated campaigns on job generation, differently abled facilities, and disaster preparedness and environmental solutions. She related, “SM Eco Bags were introduced many years ago to encourage people to adopt more eco-friendly habits. 

While plastic bags are still used, surely there can be creative ways to repurpose them!”

And sure enough, the award-winning Plastic campaign to promote SM Eco Bags hit the nail on the head.

Leigh described how the campaign evolved: “Plastic bags were used as art materials to create murals that depict what can happen when plastic bags are thrown away. We spent hours gathering together plastic bag donations and cutting and shaping them. Each plastic bag that went into the work is one less plastic bag in the environment. When we choose to reuse, whether it’s plastic bags or SM Eco Bags, we are all helping the environment, in our own small way.

“For a week in September, the original art pieces were exhibited at SM Aura. A blank background was also displayed, together with a collection box for plastic bags donated by shoppers, which we intend to use to create one more piece of art.”

It’s a whole new approach in illustrating a simple message, “Plastic bags clog drains and make floods worse.” Normally, you would follow this with urging us to not ever use plastic bags. Period.

The choice to artistically illustrate through murals how you can actually reuse these plastic bags was a creative triumph. The lesson not to throw plastic bags here and there was communicated. But their reuse was what sparked all the novel, unique and impactful executions. The plastic bags were the tools and materials in all the 4×5 ft murals! The plastic bags were cut into mosaic-like figures to form the flood scenes. 

Fantastic creations! Clever, to say the least!

And showing of all these illustrations in a grand exhibit in Aura, which is comparable to any mall exhibit of paintings by renowned artists, was the elegant dramatic highlight to Lowe’s creativity. Keeping their feet on the ground, this exhibit emphasized that it’s still a crusade to reduce the plastic bags in our areas. Great advocacy. A collection box was prominently displayed to get the shoppers’ surrender of their plastic bags for reuse. At the bottom of each mural, we read: “SM Eco Bags. 

Choose to Reuse.”

Congratulations, Lowe, Inc. and SM Prime Holdings. You just made true-blue advocacies a work of art!

Credits. Client-company, SM Prime Holdings, Inc.: Grace Magno, VP for advertising. Advertising agency, Lowe, Inc.: Leigh Reyes, president and chief creative officer; Joel Banzil and Mario Serrano, creative directors; Sonia Pascual, associate creative director; Gabie Osorio and Peter Mutuc, senior art directors; Pam Demetillo and Charles Floria, art directors; Aimee Sarmiento, business unit director; Gerald Lim, account director; Jake Fernandez, print production director/photographer; Arnel Carangan and Roger Rapacon, final artists.