PHILIPS | REFURB (Better Than New) | 2024
The decision to stop selling "new" won a Grand Prix / PHILIPS "REFURB"
Stop selling new products, and sell only repaired ones instead. That's the decision Philips made, and it won a Grand Prix at Cannes Lions. This isn't a story about a clever ad idea — it's about changing the way a company actually sells things.
The problem
Germany is one of Philips's key markets, but online returns were piling up, and more than 10 million products that still worked perfectly fine were being sent to landfill every year. Meanwhile, 38% of consumers said they wanted to pay for products that last, and 40% said they'd buy secondhand. Refurbished products needed to go from something embarrassing to something people actually wanted to choose.
The insight
They questioned the assumption that newer is always better. A dedicated team inspects returned products, cleans them, replaces parts, and backs them with the same two-year warranty as new items. This wasn't a technical fix — it was a change to the whole system. The jury president reportedly said, "Technology and innovation aren't the same thing."
The idea
Near the TV tower in Berlin, holding up your phone to scan a QR code made a pile of discarded gifts appear in augmented reality on the street. At a pop-up store in Hamburg, you could touch the real product but only buy the virtual one. And the centerpiece was "Refurb Friday" — no new products would go on sale until all the refurbished ones had sold out. The visuals were created by the art collective TOILETPAPER, and the line "Better Than New" sticks in your head.
What happened
The campaign won the Grand Prix in the Creative Business Transformation category at Cannes Lions 2024. It sold 52,000 returned products, cutting e-waste by 185 tons and CO2 emissions by 277 tons. In 2025, it also won three awards at the Clio Awards. This wasn't a one-off campaign — it became Philips's actual way of selling.
Afterthought
What really got me was that there's no going back. They didn't say "just for now" — they said "this is how we'll sell from now on." The agency didn't stop at a campaign; they went in and changed the client's actual business. I have nothing but respect for a team brave enough to stop selling new.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Grand Prix 2024
