Influx Insights has a great thought piece questioning the relevancy of disposability as a brand value or design element. The discussion was sparked by Bic’s announcement of a new disposable cell phone (!?). This idea of creating products with an extremely limited life cycle, or made in a way that doesn’t allow for easy recycling seems hopelessly dated and out of touch with current realities.
Influx Insights: Bic and the irresponsibility of disposability
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Hold on.
If you read the product description in French you realize that the BIC phone is not a disposable phone. it is “ready to go” (i.e. battery fully charged and loaded with credits for 60 mins of calls) but it can be recharged and reloaded.
It is just a low end phone with the most basic features (i.e. making calls).
BIC have 2 major brand attributes: disposability and low cost. It is the latter that they want to leverage here, not the former.
/~jc
July 17th, 2008 at 7:30 am