Philips sells only refurbished goods for the holidays — 'Refurb' wins Cannes Grand Prix

Every holiday season, millions of returned gifts end up in landfill: in 2023 an estimated 50 million gifts were returned across the EU, over 10 million of them discarded, because for many companies making something new is cheaper than opening, checking, repacking and reshipping a return. Philips wanted to expose that hidden e-waste problem — and sell its way out of it.

The answer was 'Better Than New'. LePub Amsterdam, with TOILETPAPER's Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, refreshed Philips' vintage advertising archive into a retro-future visual language, and positioned returned products as an exclusive Refurb Edition line with the same two-year warranty as new goods. On Earth Day 2023 Philips shut its website to new products entirely — the only way to buy was refurbished — and kept suspending new sales until every refurbished item sold out.

The campaign made the waste visible: a virtual display of returned gifts appeared in Berlin, transforming what could have been a landfill into an interactive digital store where visitors could buy refurbished gifts. In a key market, one in three Germans already preferred receiving second-hand gifts, giving the idea cultural tailwind.

The result was the fastest promotion in Philips history: 52,000 returned items sold, 185 tons of e-waste prevented and an estimated 277 tons of CO2 emissions avoided — and no Philips products ended up in landfills. In June 2024 the work won the Creative Business Transformation Grand Prix at Cannes Lions, with the jury noting its scale set a benchmark for the industry.