Timberland: Make it Better

"Make it better.™" was more than just a tagline we wrote for Timberland. It was a challenge to create advertising and design that lived up to that promise and served a real purpose. But in the spirit of the challenge we realized it had to serve more than one purpose, or better yet, three or four or five purposes. And better still, why not make it something consumers could repurpose too?

MAKING A BETTER AD

MAKING A BETTER SHOE BOX

If this box could carry shoes and boots, why couldn’t it carry a little hope too? A program designed around the shoe box, called the “Shoe box Effect” was created to turn 30 million shoe boxes into 30 million acts of kindness by repurposing the box as a donation vehicle. A shoe box could easily fit gloves, hats, scarves, soup cans or anything else that might help someone in need.

The way we look at it, if you have the chance to make 30 million impressions, you better make the most of them.

Inside, the box asks, “What kind of footprint will you leave?” providing a call to action for 30 million brand lovers to think about the impact their actions have on future generations.

This shoe box was designed to hold shoes and boots, which is what you’d expect from a shoe box. It was also an organizing principle for Timberland retailers. The labeling system allowed salespeople to clearly distinguish the complete line of shoes when stacked on the shelves. But we didn’t stop there.

One could also call this simple shoe box an environmental design philosophy. The boxes are made of 100% post-consumer waste and included an ingredient label on the outside with information about the environmental impact of the shoes inside – a first in the industry.