Form vs. Function and PR 2.0

Molded pulp shoebox - cool design, but not sustainable to produce.

Newton Running has recently been featured in dozens of environmental and packaging blogs (yes, blogs about packaging) with a story about their cool, eco-friendly, molded pulp shoeboxes. The story reached a fever pitch with a re-post on treehugger.com.

One problem though, Newton never actually produced those shoeboxes.

Turns out Newton’s ad agency submitted the shoebox to several design awards, and won. The box was also featured in the uber-cool Communication Arts magazine.

As is often the case, Newton learned that the ‘green design’ of the pulp shoe box was not very sustainable to produce. Not only were the pulp boxes significantly more expensive to make, but they are produced far from the footwear factory and they would dramatically increase overall freight costs because they do not stack in containers, warehouses or retail stores efficiently.

Newton has instead developed a new rectangular shoebox that is produced from 100% post consumer waste and uses soy-based inks. The new packaging is easy to store and ship, it’s lightweight and it’s easy to break down and recycle. Rather than tissue paper, they’re using recycled cardboard inserts (scraps from the box die-cut) to protect the shoes.

New sustainable shoebox

In an old PR model, all the coverage of the award-winning pulp shoebox would fit under the heading of “any publicity is good publicity.” Sure, Newton could have issued a correction in a press release, but it’s unlikely anyone would have picked it up. However, in the world of 2.0, where news is featured on blogs, forums and twitter posts, we were able to respond to this story in real-time. We set about posting comments on any site that featured the pulp shoebox story, explaining Newton’s decision to use a recycled, rectangular box, and directed them to the Newton blog for the whole story. This resulted in numerous online discussions, several new, accurate stories like this, a spike in traffic on the Newton blog and at least two interviews with Newton reps for editorial features in traditional media outlets.

Is your PR ready to step outside the box?