BackMarket is the leading European marketplace for refurbished tech, currently valued at 5.7 $Bn, and ranked #18 Most Innovative Company in the World by FastCompany in 2022.

Refurbished has found a natural audience in consumers looking to buy tech cheaper, offering them a more qualitative and reliable option than peer-to-peer second-hand marketplaces like eBay.

But BackMarket’s fight is not against second-hand: it’s against the New, for more sustainable consumption behaviors.

And compared to buying new, buying refurbished is still perceived by most consumers as a trade-off, if not a downgrade.

To convince more people to adopt this new mode of consumption, to choose refurbished beyond the promise of a good deal, BackMarket must demonstrate that it’s not a trade-off, but a better & smarter choice. One everybody should be proud of.

Because a refurbished smartphone is not only cheaper than a new one: its carbon footprint is 92% lower.

To make buyers pay attention to another rational fact about sustainability, we decided to hijack their purchase journey and challenge their behavior precisely when they were considering buying a brand new mobile.

In the very “temple of new tech”: Apple Stores©.

For Earth Day, BackMarket launched Hack Market, a campaign using Apple’s own mobile technology – AirDrop© ; and brand new iPhones©, to advertise OUR messages for a greener alternative.

Whenever shoppers were grabbing a device, a bot AirDropped© video ads that played right in front of their eyes, leading them to choose the greener alternative on BackMarket instead of Apple.

Different messages were displayed, such as “The seller won’t tell you that you can buy the same model - but reduce 92% of its carbon footprint. Luckily we just did. Go refurbished ; “Did you know this iPhone is available in black, white, blue, and greener? Go refurbished.”

It took us 2 years to gather data about the real environmental impact of buying refurbished devices vs. New ones after we suggested a research conducted by France’s Public Agency for Ecological Transition, ADEME.

But facts can hardly compete against ingrained behavior. Especially when this behavior is nurtured everyday by brands that make their “new stuff” always more desirable, and the need to own it always more compelling.

A traditional PR campaign revealing these new facts would not be enough to impact the public opinion beyond the already eco-conscious consumers. So we decided to deliver them in a provocative way to make people notice: challenge the customers of the most famous brand of New tech – Apple, and to hijack their purchase journey right before they were about to make a new purchase. And we did it when it would have the strongest PR echo globally: for EarthDay 2022.

Using Apple’s own AirDrop© technology, we turned Apple demo devices into our own media channel.

Then, we have just developed a simple bot to AirDrop© hundreds of messages to shoppers on the devices on display inside Apple stores©, through iPhones© and MacBooks© turned into 4G relays and hidden in backpacks or water bottles nearby all the Apple Stores© in Paris, London and Berlin.

And to ensure our provocative sustainability message would get a strong echo among the general public we launched the campaign for #Earthday (April 22, 2022) and amplified our operation with mobile videos ads featuring local influencers documenting the in-store experience, promoted with paid media during one week to kickstart a viral diffusion.

On April 22nd, based on accepted Airdrops©, we reached an estimated 5200 shoppers in the six Apple Stores of Paris, Berlin and London (FYI - 1M people visit Apple Stores across the world each day).

The one-day campaign also generated a strong echo beyond the stores the following week:

- 90 articles covered the operation in online and offline media across all continents, helping BackMarket strengthen its status as a contender in the tech category.

- The social videos of the operation went viral on all platforms (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube) and accumulated more than 100 million impressions (from April 22nd to April 29th).

Beyond this exposure for the brand, HackMarket had a fantastic impact as well for the refurbished category:

- intent to purchase refurbished increased on average by 27% following the campaign in the three countries

- refurbished was one of the key topics of Earthday 2022.