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Back Market, a marketplace for refurbished tech, identified a widespread problem in the personal tech industry: each year, companies like Apple create media firestorms around new product launches—launches that put hundreds of thousands of new devices onto the market while old ones are discarded in landfills. While Back Market had earned high marks from the tech industry for its innovative offering, their profile paled in comparison to the hype around new devices in the press, social media and web communities.
Back Market wanted to create a similarly large splash in tech culture on behalf of refurbished devices. They wanted to generate buzz that would ultimately drive consumers to their marketplace for sustainable, refurbished tech. We partnered with Back Market’s creative agency to answer the question: could we leverage the hype around the new iPhone 15 to raise awareness for more sustainable and affordable refurbished options from Back Market?
We used our culture hacking approach to organize a mass-cultural moment around the launch of a “new” smartphone—The R—to coincide with the iPhone 15 announcement. Our goal was to get the tech community speculating around ‘The R’ amidst all the Apple hype. To engineer this cultural moment, we executed a multi-pronged media strategy that leveraged microinfluencers on tech forums, creators on Tiktok and YouTube, mainstream press and paid media across several channels (out-of-home, paid social, YouTube display).
First, we worked closely with microinfluencers in tech forums to leak elaborate design documents for ‘The R’ that would stir up speculation on forums and discussion threads such as Macrumors and Reddit. Then, we debuted out-of-home ads around the world, in New York, Madrid, London and Paris, teasing that ‘a more sustainable phone is coming’ in September 2023.
At the same time, we partnered with influencers for the first-ever lockbox unboxing - in which they received a timed lockbox, containing innovative new tech, that would be set to open on the date of the Apple announcement.
On September 12, 2023, we had our big reveal. Influencers unboxed their lockboxes to reveal a refurbished iPhone from Back Market, global billboards transformed to reveal that “The R” actually stood for “Refurbished" and we took over the YouTube masthead during the Apple keynote, ensuring millions would know that a more sustainable phone is already here.
Beyond earned media impressions, the impact of our mass-cultural campaign was immediate. Our campaign stoked public interest in refurbished tech, driving a 300% increase in online searches for “refurbished phones" and also led to a 68% increase in new shoppers to backmarket.com. Above all, sales of refurbished devices on Back Market since the campaign have kept the equivalent of 241,700 tons of CO2e from entering the atmosphere.
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