GOOGLE REAL ESTATE & WORKPLACE SERVICES

Challenge

Google’s cafeterias and their free food are famous, but too much of a good thing can pack on pounds and food waste. We needing a subtle way to impress upon diners that they should only take what they need, not load up meals for home, and to clean up and recycle food waste and packaging inside the cafes.

Solution

We proposed the most subtle yet irresistible, simple yet unexpected way of delivering some of the most straightforward, awkward, and “do-we-really-need-talk-about-this?” reminders and messages like, “Please don’t bring food home to feed your entire family.”

We did it in 17 syllables. Through the ancient Japanese form of haiku, we dropped incredibly polite hints throughout Google campuses worldwide in many languages, displayed on closed circuit television and on table-toppers and through internal communications.

We then appealed to Googlers’ inventiveness by asking for their participation in writing the next batch of Google etiquette haiku. In other words, reading (and understanding) Google rules became an active, two-way communication with a core of shared creativity.