Decathlon is one of the biggest sport retailers in the world. To become a more sustainable sports brand they want to expand their offering with second hand sporting goods. To do that, they needed… second hand sporting goods. So, they organized a huge BuyBack Action.

Without a decent media and production budget, the goal was to launch this BuyBack Action in the most impactful way possible.

The idea started from a very simple insight:

Buying back products, that’s a bit like shopping in reverse, right?

So, we reversed the entire Decathlon-brand to nolhtaceD. For a full month store fronts, the website, social media accounts and even the shop receipt said nolhtaceD.

It was simply unavoidable: the nolhtaced-signs encouraged dustomers to start shopping in reverse a.k.a. partake in the BuyBack Action.

PR had two big challenges here: getting the press to talk about the sustainable message behind the stunt rather than the stunt itself, and keeping nolhtaceD in the news for an entire month.

Key message: at Decathlon you can sell your second hand sports material and take part into the new circular consumption pattern.

We focused on a journalistic way of communicating to gain national coverage. Two 2 big assets were key:

- credibility

- proving with own data and data from market research that nolhtaceD is no ad hoc campaign, but a real circular model Decathlon developed

- proving Decathlon is serious about it by changing the logo of three big shops in each part of Belgium into nolhtaceD

-multiple newsworthy stories

We communicated not less than four times: this way we were in the media with the campaign even longer than the campaign itself.

How do you reverse a well known brand?

On Sunday 9th of October 2022, Decathlon-front stores in Belgium reversed their name to Nolhtaced. The confusement got people talking immediately.

The day after the website, social media accounts and even the shop receipt said nolhtaceD. For a full month, it was simply unavoidable.

Our courageous and uncompromising PR-approach paid off: the press started explaining our action and soon the public was well informed about our BuyBack Action and the sustainable reasons behind it.

The results grow to be even more impressive:

Communication:

- 41% of Belgians saw the campaign.

- We reached more than 10.000.000 million readers, on- & offline.

- € 416.316 earned media value.

- Over a 100 press clippings in neighbouring countries about the action.

- +6,54% influencer engagement vs. average in Belgium

- +2.237% Linkedin-impressions in 24 hours.

- +61,5% direct mail openings vs. average.

- Website impact: +32% vs. day before.

Business:

- More than 26.000 items flew back on the shelves. And counting.

- Voucher value over € 593.000.

- 54% of returned items were sold second hand before November 25th.