Ranked #18 Most Innovative Company in the World by FastCompany in 2022, BackMarket aims to make refurbished a sustainable alternative to transform the hi-tech industry.

Communication has the power to drive change by unlocking cultural habits, and sometimes it needs to break a few rules on the way. Like, advertising precisely on the devices we don’t want people to purchase.

With “Hack Market”, BackMarket challenged the biggest brand in the world to provoke consumers in a fun and simple way. To make people understand that “newest” isn’t always “best”, and that buying old devices actually is a source of progress.

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.

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It is intuitively obvious to anyone that buying refurbished is more sustainable than buying new. But by how much? So we asked ADEME, the Public Agency for Ecological Transition in France, to conduct a dedicated research.

It took 2 years to get the answers and hard facts, but habits die hard, and dry 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 enjoy it always more compelling.

So we did not stop at claiming our facts in a traditional campaign.

To leverage them in a way that could influence behaviors, we delivered them when they would get the most attention: right before consumers were about to purchase a new device. Which meant hijacking their purchase journey. And we did it when it would have the strongest PR echo, for Earth Day.

We had identified our critical touchpoint – Apple Stores©, but no media placement was available. So we created our own. Using Apple’s own AirDrop© technology.

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.

In short, we turned Apple Stores© and technology© as the ultimate media touchpoint to challenge consumers behavior and make them choose Refurbished over New.

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 digital videos featuring local influencers documenting the in-store experience, promoted with paid media during one week to kickstart a viral diffusion.

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