20 September 2019 – CONAI, the National Packaging Consortium, has chosen “Made in Connexia” creativity to convey the importance of recycling and explain the circular economy to consumers. Three celebrities from the restaurant, sport and entertainment worlds – Joe Bastianich, Martin Castrogiovanni and Ludmilla Radchenko – use objects made from six different materials (steel, aluminium, paper, wood, plastic, and glass) to tell their stories and how they “recycled” themselves when they changed jobs. The campaign aims to bring CONAI closer to people, while raising their awareness and explaining a concept as vast and complicated as the circular economy in an easy-to-understand way.

Recycling and its perceived value is increasingly more common, but all too often it is not backed up a full understanding of how individual initiatives can have a positive impact of the environment. This is why CONAI felt the need to find a fun way to explain the circular economy and how it connects to people’s personal stories. The branded content devised by Connexia uses life events of three famous people, all of whom have undergone positive, successful transformations, as inspiration and ideally wishes to connect the second career of the three star testimonials – Joe Bastianich, Martin Castrogiovanni and Ludmilla Radchenko – with the lifecycle of each individual type of packaging which is recycled and then transformed into something new thanks to the circular economy.

And so thanks to the creative direction of Adriano Aricò and Anna Vasta we have “The Recycleds”, four episodes of branded content devised and produced by Connexia in which Joe Bastianich, Martin Castrogiovanni and Ludmilla Radchenko explain how previous experience can play an essential role in transformation on CONAI’s social channels and also on their own properties between 26 June and the end of the year. The campaign’s stars are “interviewed” by six objects that have all been made from material recycled from six different packaging materials. The campaign wraps up with a video featuring the three testimonials explaining how we can spread the word and about the entire lifecycle of the six materials and how the circular economy works.

“Branded content is an increasingly more important and popular communication lever that has enabled us to use original storytelling to explain concepts that are not always easily understood or seemingly relevant to the public, such as recycling and the circular economy,” explained Massimiliano Trisolino, Connexia’s Managing Partner for Strategy and Creativity. “Thanks to the videos devised and produced by Connexia Media House, our in-house production company, we have successfully increased people’s understanding of CONAI and helped them to see it as a bearer of positive messages. We have planned a four-step activation model for the year that gradually brings people closer to CONAI and its messages, and helps to build a relevant path that produces greater social awareness and reasons why everyone can do something concrete to protect the environment.”

One of the campaign’s stars, Joe Bastianich, explains the essence of the campaign’s messages, “Recycling (and knowing how to recycle) is a vital part of life today. Recycling has never been such a crucial issue as it is today, an issue we should all take very seriously. The earth, our planet, does not have unlimited resources and now is the time to start giving it the respect it deserves, starting with small gestures. That’s why I decided to work with CONAI so I can help to get this message across. It would be wonderful if we could all think about what we can do in our everyday lives and … and then do it every day without fail. That is the really difficult part.”