Canopy's Earth Friendly Pack4Good Initiative Makes Solutions Sexy

Parkview Creative were commissioned by Canopy, a Canadian-founded NGO, to create a new, multi-media campaign for the company’s Pack4Good initiative. The initiative spotlights earth-friendly alternatives for mass produced paper packaging - predominantly used in the food and beauty industries.

Parkview Creative are a London-based, independent creative studio who work with some of the world’s most well-known brands to tell stories across film, photography, animation and podcasts. Although they work cross-sector, Parkview has become the go to agency for brands doing good with projects in climate action, slow fashion, healthcare, ethical beauty, the list goes on. Canopy is driven by a deep desire to save ancient and endangered forests from being cut down by the fashion, textiles, food and beauty industries for packaging. This is their second major collaboration in two years.

Parkview Creative enlisted freelance talent and their in-house team for a full-service approach to the brief, which started with the creative ideation being marked up alongside Canopy’s team of marketeers and strategists. Parkview then followed the campaign all the way through to production and delivery. 

The photographic campaign was shot by John Gribben, a still life photographer famed for his exploration of texture and form. Previously a craftsman, John understands the complexity of natural materials and was commissioned for this project due to his innate understanding of how to elevate natural textures with a luxury aesthetic.. John can count British Vogue, Google, Nike, Adidas, Elle, Selfridges and more as previous clients and Parkview Creative were proud to have him on board for this campaign. 

John said about the campaign “even the most ordinary objects can be transformed into something beautiful, so it was a pleasure to work with Canopy and Parkview on this fun and unusual brief. It was exciting to approach the project from a luxury viewpoint, creating lighting setups and working with set design pieces which would elevate the paper packaging and take the shoot somewhere new and fresh.”

Art director Rafaela Spangenthal offered her incredible talents, spending weeks collecting different props from nature to tell the story of the products and their life cycle. The sets were given the finishing touches by food stylist and author Jennifer Joyce. 

The result? A photographic campaign of six different triptychs, three referencing the beauty industry and three referencing the food industry. The approach was to lean into the aesthetic of each industry; side-lining the eco-beige or fear mongering campaigns we’re used to seeing when the climate is part of the narrative. The triptychs aimed to share what properly earth-conscious packaging could look like and were accompanied with descriptive copy that informed the audience and made it accessible for suppliers or buyers. 

Canopy’s long standing tagline is ‘solutions are sexy’ - a descriptor which initially felt difficult to relate to deforestation, paper packaging and next gen fabrics. But Director Helena C-J crafted a concept which worked.

The film which accompanies the campaign, was a double-play on behind the scenes, shot with tongue-in-cheek humour that aimed to showcase the inner workings of the campaign and those working behind the scenes in climate action. Helena C-J, who directed the film and has worked with the likes of Gore-Tex, FitBit, Ocean Spray and Huel said: 

"As a comedy-loving director, I found the challenge of making paper packaging in itself pretty funny. It's not something anyone's ever really seen (or attempted) before. So it felt right that we should show some of the thought process in the BTS that got us to the end result. Embracing a self-aware sense of humour, it was a delight to challenge the conventional perception of eco and sustainable packaging by infusing it with a touch of sexiness. The climate topic can be tough to think about, so by treating it with a little light-heartedness I aimed to make it more accessible and relatable to a broader audience. Ultimately, our goal was to inspire viewers and companies to re-evaluate their perception of packaging and the impact it has on the environment, and I'm so glad to have been a part of this project.” 

The film was produced and executive produced by Parkview’s in-house team, Rachel Dyson and Maddy Valder respectively.