Back Market | Project R
The world of tech is driven by innovation and the lust for new. This is not sustainable. Back Market provides refurbished tech, and needed to convince the public to rethink their approach to buying new tech products. The biggest proponent of new tech is Apple. With their scheduled September Keynote, it was expected to see the release of yet another new iPhone. We planned to hijack this global event in a way that would make people rethink the idea of ‘innovation’. We created our own global ad campaign for a new phone - the ‘R’. Weeks and weeks of teaser content built up until the day of the Apple keynote, only to reveal that a more sustainable phone can never be new. It can only be refurbished.
The first step was to create a brand. We needed a name, a product, and a robust set of guidelines. The ‘R’ was developed to look just close enough to Apple so as to create some online discussion.
Next we ‘accidentally’ left some campaign guideline documents in coffee shops around cities, and leaked this information on tech forums.
Once we had established some discussion amongst the hardcore tech enthusiasts, we went broader with our campaign. A cryptic cinema spot kicked things off.
Then large format OOH, and radio spots launched simultaneously across the US, UK, Spain, France, and Germany.
The discussions on social ramped up immediately once our OOH went live, so to capitalise on this, we sent out a Lockbox to tech influencers across all of our regions. These boxes would only open on the day of the Apple Keynote.
On the day of the Apple Keynote we revealed our campaign idea. Our billboards switched from ‘R’ to ‘Refurbished’, our Lockboxes opened to reveal that they did in fact include an iPhone, but a refurbished model, and our digital banners redirected the millions watching the Apple keynote to the Back Market website.
We booked Youtube banners that appeared the second the Apple Keynote finished. After watching Mother Earth speak on behalf of the iPhone 15 - our message felt even more poignant.
