Ranked #18 Most Innovative Company in the World by FastCompany in 2022, Back Market 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”,

Back Market 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.

This campaign is an in-store activation, with a clear call-to-action: buy refurbished instead of new.

Except… the stores are not Back Market’s (a marketplace without physical stores), but Apple’s, where we could reach our core target of buyers of new devices at the perfect moment. And our media placement is not traditional POS, but the actual devices that we don’t want people to purchase.

A never-seen-before brand experience that reached a larger audience thanks to a strong online echo.

Our creative idea: To make buyers pay attention to yet another rational fact about sustainability, we decided to hijack their purchase journey and challenge their behavior precisely when they were considering buying a brand new device.

In the very “temple of new tech”: Apple Stores©.

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 and brand new iPhones©, to advertise OUR messages for a greener alternative.

Whenever shoppers were grabbing 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. Each video was landing on the exact same Apple model on Back Market’s marketplace, ready to be purchased.

Different messages were displayed, such as “The seller won’t tell you that you can buy the same model - but reduce 92% of its carbon footprint. Luckily, we just did. Go refurbished; “Did you know this iPhone is available in black, white, blue, and greener? Go refurbished.”

The foundations of Hack Market were “Leverage your opponent’s strengths”:

- Apple has stores, Backmarket doesn’t. - Apple invests a gigantic marketing budget to get people to visit their stores and try new devices. - They have developed AirDrop©, a great technology to smoothly send a file to a device located nearby.

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.