French people give increasingly less clothing to charity. They prefer to sell what they no longer wear on online second-hand stores. To address this challenge, Emmaüs France launched a unique campaign by “hijacking” Vinted, France’s largest online second-hand store, to promote their clothing donation drive.

By leveraging Vinted's platform against itself, Emmaüs created a surprising and impactful brand experience for users, leading to a renewed appreciation of Emmaüs’ purpose and encouraging clothing donations.

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.

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 promote clothing donations, we creatively utilized France’s largest online second-hand store, Vinted, by hijacking their tagline: “Don't wear it? Sell it!” and rephrasing it “Don't wear it? Give it!” Our call to action was designed on hundreds of items listed on Vinted, effectively turning them into 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? Give 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.

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