This ingenious packaging design went viral simply by recognising how people were already using it

When a great packaging design is particularly useful, consumers might give it a second life, boosting sustainability by making it more than a single-use item. That's the case of cream containers in Mexico, and one brand has become a viral hit by finally recognising the fact.

Customers often re-use Lala cream pots to store all kind of other things in the fridge: beans, salsa, tinga or leftovers from the day before. It's such a familiar household ritual that it's inspired jokes and memes around the common problem of not knowing what's inside the pots. Lala's now come up with a solution, officially recognising that its packaging isn't for its own product alone.

The 'Mexiconteiners' project was a proactive idea born from observation and developed by the creative agencies Zurda México and Conciergency. They designed a Lala cream tub with a dedicated space where people can write what's stored inside once the original product's gone.

"It was 100% a lightbulb moment born out of lived experience," says Diego Gueler Montero, chief creative officer at Zurda México. "You don't need a focus group or a massive research study for this, you just need to have grown up in Mexico.

"Every single Mexican has played that fridge Russian roulette: opening a Lala container expecting cream, only to find leftover beans, rice, or salsa. It’s a generational inside joke the brand had never officially acknowledged. All we did was connect the dots between that universal truth and a product innovation."

What made the idea so strong is that Lala wasn’t telling customers what to do with its packaging but recognising the spontaneous reuse that has already been happening for years. Rather than run a standard product promo, Zurda saw an opportunity to spark a conversation that reinforced Lala's place as an everyday staple.

"We realised we didn't need to push the product itself; we needed to celebrate the container’s second lifecycle," Diego says. "That second life is the ultimate proof of how deeply rooted the brand is in our culture."

It seems such a simple and obvious idea after the fact. But it needed the right execution.

"The challenge was to make that new function feel completely integrated into the brand," says Valentina Zuchiatti, chief creative officer at Conciergency. "We incorporated illustrations and graphic codes rooted in Mexican culture and everyday life, together with a dedicated space where people could write what they were storing inside, while keeping the pack unmistakably Lala."

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Customers responded, completing the circle. The campaign sparked a new wave of memes on social media as people made the design their own and shared what they kept in their containers.

Conceived as a campaign, the design now has the potential to be a long-term platform.

"Reusing Lala containers has been a habit in Mexican fridges for decades, we just gave it an official name," Diego says. "Given how huge the response was, it stopped being just a temporary campaign and turned into a permanent cultural asset the brand can keep building on."

"What’s especially exciting is that the idea didn’t stop with the original Mexiconteiners," Valentina adds. "It’s now expanding into other Lala products and collaborations, including licensed editions such as Peanuts. What began as a cultural observation on one pack is becoming a flexible design platform that the brand can continue to reinterpret."

Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.