During its first years, the emerging category of refurbished found a natural audience among consumers looking to buy tech at a lower cost, offering them a more qualitative and reliable option than second-hand marketplaces like eBay.

But the growth of the category and the brand soon plateaued. To make refurbished mainstream, to change behaviors, it was critical to convince more than just the bargain hunters.

The problem: compared to buying new devices, purchasing refurbished ones was still perceived by most consumers as a trade-off, if not a downgrade. Indeed, who gets excited to buy an old device?

To win this battle, Back Market had to “hack” consumers’ relationship to new tech.

The first pillar of this strategy was a new marketing platform, summarized in a bold brand slogan: New Is Old.

After having developed entertaining and provoking campaigns to educate consumers about how refurbished works, to create the conditions of trust, and to challenge people to free themselves from the race for ‘new’, it was time to deliver the definitive argument for refurbished: sustainability.

It is intuitively obvious that buying refurbished is more sustainable than buying new. But by how much? To answer this question, we asked ADEME, the Public Agency for Ecological Transition in France, to conduct dedicated research. It took two years to obtain, for the first time, the true answers and quantified, indisputable facts.

But habits die hard, and dry facts can hardly compete against ingrained behavior, especially when this behavior is nurtured daily by brands that make their "new stuff" increasingly desirable and the need to enjoy it ever more urgent.

A traditional awareness campaign would not be enough. To make consumers pay attention to yet another rational fact about sustainability, we decided to focus our efforts when and where it would get the most attention: by hijacking their purchase journey and making them think twice right before they were about to make a new purchase.

In the very "temple of new tech": Apple Stores.

Back Market launched Hack Market, a campaign using Apple's own technology – AirDrop – and brand new iPhones, to advertise ITS messages for a greener alternative.

Whenever shoppers grabbed a device, a bot ‘AirDropped‘ video ads that played right in front of their eyes, leading them to choose the greener and cheaper alternative on Back Market instead of Apple.

Different messages were displayed, such as "The sales clerk won't tell you that you can buy the same model - but reduce 91% of its carbon footprint. Luckily, we just did. Go refurbished." or "Did you know this iPhone is available in black, white, blue, and greener? Go refurbished."

To ensure this provocative sustainability message would get the strongest PR echo among the general public, we launched the activation for #EarthDay (April 22, 2022) and amplified it with digital videos featuring local influencers documenting the in-store experience. These were promoted with paid media for one week to kickstart viral diffusion.