We turned Vinted into a powerful vehicle for promoting clothing donations to Emmaüs, instead of selling items online. With zero budget for media promotion, we creatively repurposed Vinted's listings as solidarity billboards, calling on users to donate their clothes. Our innovative approach transformed Vinted into a social solidarity platform, encouraging people to show their generosity by contributing to Emmaüs.

Since the emergence of second-hand platforms, such as Vinted, French people are donating fewer and fewer clothes to charities. At Emmaüs France, we've relied on clothing donations for 70 years to raise funds and help people in need. And without these donations, the NGO's entire model is threatened. With a limited budget, how can we incentivize people to donate their clothes instead of selling them? Simply by communicating in the most strategic place: directly on Vinted, France’s largest online second-hand store.

To reach Vinted users and encourage them to donate rather than sell what they no longer wear, we designed hundreds of items (such as t-shirts, shirts, sweatshirts, bags, jackets, etc.) by twisting the Vinted tagline “Don't wear it? Sell it!” into “Don't wear it? Give it!” We posted these items as regular listings on the platform (using the fake profile Emma_Us), turning them into virtual billboards calling for clothing donations. Then, we let the algorithm do the work. Nothing was for sale; instead, each item invited users to donate clothes directly to Emmaüs. We achieved a major first by using Vinted as a genuine advertising vehicle, without any budget commitments.

Our campaign focused on young French people who tend to donate fewer and fewer clothes, preferring to sell online what they no longer wear. To call for clothing donations, we decided to communicate directly on France’s largest online second-hand store: Vinted. With no media budget, we used the listings ads as virtual billboards to encourage clothing donations.

We creatively “hijacked” the Vinted France website by using hundreds of items as virtual billboards to call for clothing donations. We designed these items by rephrasing Vinted's tagline, “Don't wear it? Sell it!” to “Don't wear it? Donate it!” and posted them online as real listings on our profile “Emma_Us”. We conducted this operation in March 2023, after the winter sales, on Vinted, France’s largest online second-hand store. The campaign lasted for 24 hours before Vinted removed all our posts from the platform.

65 million impressions

2 million reach

19% increase in clothing donation intentions

€0 media budget

250 media mentions (main national TV and newspapers)

More than 50 influencers & KOLs talked about the Emmaüs campaign

Social networks were hugely enthusiastic about the idea, as people realized the importance of clothing donations for an NGO like Emmaüs. Especially in comparison to the complexity that a sale on Vinted can entail.

To encourage people not to sell their clothes on Vinted but rather to donate them to Emmaus, Vinted was simply the most effective communication channel. And as we hijacked it, it didn’t cost a centime!

Vinted is France’s largest online second-hand store, with 23 million users, mostly young people.