What do you get when you collect a bunch of expired coupons? An unexpected bonus – and a prestigious prize.
A creative Ziploc campaign involving coupons has earned manufacturer SC Johnson a top prize at the “Oscars of advertising.” The company beat out hundreds of hopefuls to win top honors at the recent 2025 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, an annual awards event that showcases the best in global advertising.
Ziploc’s “Preserved Promos” campaign earned the prestigious Grand Prix in Creative Commerce, along with five additional Cannes Lions awards, for its unique approach to engaging value-seeking shoppers.
“When inflation grows, shoppers rely on grocery coupons,” Ziploc ad agency VML explained. “But just like the food we buy, coupons expire with time. So Ziploc, the expert tool to preserve food, decided to preserve the promos we use to buy it.”
The Preserved Promos campaign invited shoppers to “extend the life” of their expired food coupons, by visiting a dedicated website and uploading an image of an expired offer. The system used text and image recognition to validate that the coupon was for an actual food item and was actually expired. A successful upload unlocked a new savings offer – scan a receipt showing the purchase of food items and at least one Ziploc product to earn up to $4 off, in the form of a Barcode Buck$ offer redeemable in store at participating retailers, or in the form of cash deposited to a Venmo or PayPal account.
“The result,” SC Johnson explained, was “a unique digital experience that preserved expired promos, elevated the Ziploc brand relevance, and rewarded everyday families in a meaningful way… proving that saving money can be as easy and satisfying as sealing freshness with Ziploc.”
The campaign wasn’t the only prize winner to incorporate coupons in a creative way. Among the runners-up was the silver award winner, Brazil’s Mercado Livre. The e-commerce company’s “Coupon Rain” campaign in the soccer-crazy country replaced the confetti that rained over the winners of a national championship with coupons. Eagle-eyed fans who acted fast could zoom into photos of the event and redeem whatever unique coupon code they could find imprinted on a piece of confetti.
Other non-winning entrants included Hellmann’s “Ketchup Currency” campaign, which let you upload photos of unused takeout ketchup packets and turn them into coupons redeemable for Hellmann’s “superior” condiment.
And perhaps the most unusual entrant was “Mom Coupons,” from Brazilian food delivery app ifood. It was aimed at late-night revelers who come home and crave food delivery. But “many ungrateful young adults forget to let their moms know they got home safe,” the company explained. So the campaign allowed moms to sign up and receive a 50% off coupon to offer their kids – the catch being that the kids had to call their moms when they got home in order to get the code.
Success has a way of breeding imitation, or repetition. After all, if it worked once, it could always work again. When Ziploc’s Preserved Promos campaign ended last month, the campaign’s website was updated with a notice saying “Preserved Promos will be back soon.” An SC Johnson spokesperson told Coupons in the News that while “the Ziploc brand is always looking for meaningful ways to help consumers save money and preserve their food longer,” there is not “anything to share at the moment” about whether there are definite plans to bring the promotion back, and when.
But if you’d like to turn your old food coupons into new food coupons – better start saving up those expired offers, just in case.
Image source: VML
