The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2023–2024
Makro ripeness stickers match fruit stage to recipe — ripe fruit gets eaten, not tossed
To fight Colombia's food waste, Makro turns the humble produce sticker into a ripeness guide with recipes for each stage — a Clio 2024 Grand.
Makro Colombia · Grey Colombia (VML)
What it had to solve
Colombia wastes about 6.1 million tons of food a year, roughly 40% of it fruits and vegetables, largely because shoppers reject produce as it ripens for cosmetic reasons. Makro, a cash-and-carry retailer, wanted a cheap, scalable way to change that behavior across its stores.
How it works
Colombia wastes around 6.1 million tons of food every year, and about 40% of that is fruit and vegetables — much of it thrown away simply because it no longer looks perfect. Makro, a cash-and-carry retailer, wanted to change how shoppers treat produce as it ripens, without asking them to download anything or pay more.
Grey Colombia found the medium already in everyone's hands: the tiny sticker on every piece of fruit. They rebuilt it as a Life Extending Sticker — biodegradable, printed with eco-ink, using only colors — that mirrors the fruit's ripening stages and suggests a recipe for each one: a ripe banana becomes cake batter, a green papaya goes into lemonade.
The stickers launched on bananas, avocados, tomatoes, mangoes and papayas across 22 Makro stores, appearing on 'Market Wednesdays and Sundays,' with the recipe ideas amplified on the retailer's Instagram. No app, no sensors, no QR codes — the information lives on the produce itself.
The campaign won a 2024 Clio Grand Prix in Creative Use of Data (plus six more Clios), three Cannes Lions, nine London International Awards and three PHNX Grands Prix, while generating 85,000+ social interactions and reaching a 264M audience through organic coverage in more than 25 countries.
Why it lands
- It used a medium that already touched every product: the fruit sticker was ubiquitous but invisible, so the idea required no new distribution.
- It turned a sustainability problem into an in-the-moment nudge: the answer is printed on the thing you're about to throw away.
- The recipes solved the actual reason people waste ripe produce — not knowing what to do with it — rather than just lecturing them.
- It worked with zero technology, keeping cost and friction near zero for both the retailer and the shopper.
What it did
A Clio 2024 Grand Prix in Creative Use of Data plus two Golds, three Silvers and a Bronze at Clio; three Cannes Lions and nine London International Awards; 85,000+ social interactions; a 264M audience reached through organic coverage in more than 25 countries; and three PHNX Grands Prix.
What you can take
You don't need a new medium to innovate — give an invisible, decades-old one a purpose: the sticker already touched every piece of produce, so the idea rode existing infrastructure into every store.
Since then
Life Extending Stickers became one of the most decorated purpose campaigns of 2024, picking up a Clio Grand Prix in Creative Use of Data, three Cannes Lions, nine London International Awards and three PHNX Grands Prix, and it kept running in stores as part of Makro's sustainability program tied to four UN SDGs, including responsible production and consumption. The idea also traveled: Grey and VML positioned it as a template for retailers in other markets where cosmetic rejection of ripe produce drives food waste.
Sources
- Grey Honored with 15 Clios
- These Simple Stickers Help Extend the Lifespan of Fruit and Vegetables to Prevent Waste
- Life Extending Stickers — London International Awards entry
- Orange, Mastercard, Microsoft and Barbie Win Multiple Grand Clios
- Here are the 2024 PHNX Awards Grand Prix winners
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