As we enter December, we submit to the seasonal joys of steamy peppermint-laced drinks, claymation movies and observing hordes of people cosplaying the same jolly, reindeer-loving character.
But this holiday, some brands are using the time to take a stand for the planet and urging a more mindful kind of consumerism. In a joint campaign, period and sexual health product maker Lola and clean beauty brand Pacifica are promoting sustainability during the holiday season by telling consumers there’s only one kind of necessary wrapping: condoms.
With the declaration “It’s a wrap on holiday wrapping!” the campaign consists of graphics with the message “Some packages need wrapping. Some don’t.” shared on both brands’ social channels, and a limited-edition holiday gift set containing a skin care product from Pacifica—its Reusable Eye + Brow Masks—and a pack of Lola’s vegan Ultra Thin Latex Condoms.
According to a Stanford study, during the Thanksgiving to New Year’s holiday period, Americans produce 25 million tons of trash. Much of that extra garbage can be attributed to the decorative packaging used to conceal gifts—aka wrapping paper and plastic ribbons and bows—as well as greeting cards, catalogs and incidentals like batteries.
No one is suggesting a cease to gift-giving. Instead, the analysts at Stanford, alongside other organizations, are urging people to be more conscious of how they give gifts. Their website offers tips for holiday season waste reduction including gifting educational and/or entertaining excursions like a museum trip or a concert, crafting unique and personalized gifts, and, of course, simply using recycled or repurposed paper or bags to wrap presents.
Doing more with less
Lola and Pacifica are both women-founded, women-run brands built on an ethos of environmentalism and empowerment. Lola CEO Amy Fisher told Adweek she felt an immediate sense of kinship with Pacifica when she met founder and CEO Brook Harvey-Taylor at a recent conference.
“There was just so much synergy there, between being female-founded, female-led [and] our missions for being clean and sustainable and vegan,” she said.
Lola sells health products like tampons, pads, condoms and lubricants that are sustainable and transparent in their ingredients (its launch in 2015 began with the question “What’s in my tampon?”), and provides accurate sex, reproductive and wellness education by experts.
Pacifica, started in 1996, manufactures cosmetics that are vegan, cruelty-free and eco-conscious at an accessible price point. Pacifica also has a focus in activism—it’s a longtime partner of the ACLU and Gentle Barn in supporting human and animal rights by using low-impact ingredients and packaging. This year, it partnered with Plastic Collective for its 100% Plastic Collection Plan.
The “It’s a Wrap” campaign was born out of Fisher and Harvey-Taylor’s first meeting, during which they both mentioned thinking about possible holiday campaigns for their respective brands.
“The timing of it matched up perfectly,” Fisher said. “It grew from just an email campaign to a social campaign to a collaborative giveaway, and into introducing our communities to each brand.”
True to the mission of both brands, the campaign has an emphasis on education about sustainability, passing along data-backed insights like if every American family chose repurposed material to wrap only three gifts, the amount of paper saved would cover 45,000 football fields. With the contents of the holiday set, the campaign also carries with it one of the core tenets of both companies: activism.
“We stand up for what we believe in,” Harvey-Taylor told Adweek. “We’re not afraid to take lumps on social media. That’s a really important piece of this campaign and why we’re partnering with Lola when reproductive rights are on the table and people are losing their freedom. We’re focused on fighting for reproductive health care rights and basic human rights. This is a tongue-in-cheek campaign, but it’s something we take really seriously.”
The “It’s a Wrap” limited-edition set dropped Dec. 1 and will be available until supplies last, exclusively on Pacifica’s website.
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