Episode 94 - Back Market Hack Market Ad Reviewed by KFC
For Earth Day 2022, Back Market pulled a daring stunt aiming to stop people from buying new iPhones in Apple stores in London, Paris and Berlin, all in the name of reducing carbon emissions and the impact on the environment. This week on Advertisers Watching Ads, we review the ad produced by Marcel and chosen by Contagious.
How did our guests Carmen Bryant (formerly the Head of US Marketing at Indeed) and Tori Carter (Senior Manager of Brand Marketing and Creative at KFC) react to this clever challenge? Did the ad do enough for the brand or was it just a fun, original idea with no follow-up? Watch it all to find out!
Automated Transcript
Episode 94 - Back Market Hack Market Ad Reviewed by KFC
Tom Ollerton 00:00
Hello and welcome to Advertisers Watching Ads. This is a weekly show where brands watch other brands' ads and discuss what's good and bad about them. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative, and we're very excited to be brought to you again by contagious.com. So please go and check those guys out after the show who helped us find this week's ad. But before we get to this week's creative, let's meet this week's guests.
Carmen Bryant 00:30
Hi, everyone. My name is Carmen Bryant. I am formerly the Head of U.S. Marketing at Indeed. And I'm currently a free agent. So really excited to be here today.
Tori Carter 00:40
Hello, everybody. My name is Tori Carter. I'm the Senior Manager of Brand Marketing and Creative for KFC Global.
Tom Ollerton 00:46
What a panel! Thanks so much for joining us guys. So buying a refurbished iPhone cuts carbon emissions by 91% versus buying a new one. It's also meant to save 68,800 liters of water. And the agency that produced this work was very vocal about the connection between this ad and the recent IPCC report on highlighting the climate crisis. So this ad ran on the 22nd of April to mark Earth Day to raise awareness of the availability of refurbished iPhones. It was created by Marcel for Back Market who are a huge reseller of refurbished iPhones in France and Germany. It wasn't so much PR for the brand as it was about sustainability and stopping people from buying new Apple phones in store. And this idea is amazing. So let's have a look at it. What we're going to do is give this execution a vote out of five. One, two, three...
Tori Carter 03:08
I'm, like, too undecisive.
Tom Ollerton 03:10
Well, let's call that, let's call that...
Tori Carter 03:11
You know what? I'm going to give them a 3 because I like the idea. We can give it a 2.5. Yeah, I love the idea.
Tom Ollerton 03:15
So Carmen... What was your take on that when you first saw it?
Carmen Bryant 03:19
I actually quite liked it. I thought they did a really good job of taking advantage of a cultural moment, Earth Day. And doing something really bold by sort of connecting to behemoth that is Apple and making people sit up and pay attention. And also really making it, you know, easy for consumers to do the right thing when they're in that mindset of purchasing a new iPhone. So this is pretty, pretty clever and interesting.
Tori Carter 03:47
Yeah, I would say, listen, I love how disruptive it is. Being both yourself as a brand and then also finding a way to break through and actually get noticed are really powerful kind of levers you can pull in terms of getting attention and actually getting your message out there. So I love the approach. Super clever. Definitely, definitely really fun and definitely, I think, gets people's attention, which is important.
Tom Ollerton 04:08
Do you think this actually works?
Tori Carter 04:10
Carmen, I don't know about you, but I also was dying just to see the conversion results of this. Like, did it actually drive a bunch of new traffic to their site and did they actually sell a bunch of refurbished phones after this? Because I think while super clever and disruptive, I think there were some additional opportunities they could have had with their messaging or making sure that it was actually driving traffic and converting the sale, because I think that was the goal. That was my big question as well, like, which I couldn't find on the video. And I tried to read online, but did it actually work? Did it drive, drive traffic to them? Carmen, I don't know what you thought. Yeah...
Carmen Bryant 04:40
Yeah. I mean, we start off pretty strong with Apple at the beginning and it's very prominent. So I did find myself in the first half of the ad, you know, intrigued, but you know, I felt like the branding of Back Market was not as prominent as it could have been. You know, I was wondering a bit like, did people actually, if you weren't sort of really familiar with the brand already, which I'm guessing the point of this was that they're really trying to be more disruptive and get folks' attention. If you would have walked away with a really clear, sort of like brand call to action.
Tori Carter 05:14
Yeah. It's such a good point, Carmen. And the same thing came to my mind, too, because, right, if you're not doing something like this to drive sales transactions, you're doing something like this to build your brand. And to be honest, I completely agree. As someone not familiar with the brand, I don't know how much this actually like brought their brand through or built their brand necessarily. And it's a really interesting point that even in the recap video, it actually highlights another brand almost more predominantly than it highlights their own.
Carmen Bryant 05:39
Yeah. So imagine this idea has been presented to you. What would your feedback to the team be to make this better? I think first is let's really understand what we're trying to do here. Are we really trying to sort of brand build? Are we trying to drive conversions? Like what is our ultimate end goal? I think there's a conversation to be had around sort of the messaging and branding based on that criteria. Let's assume that this is for brand building sake, like how do we make sure that Back Market is more prominent earlier on, that we have sort of at least Apple exposure as the Apple brand does? Let's more prominently interject the 'why' into the conversation. Finally, it would be as we think about what we're trying to do, what are the channels that this really needs to be sort of, executed, like sort of delivered. If it's brand building, then perhaps this is the right sort of channel. But as we think about it, it's more about conversions. Is there a more efficient way to have this delivered to, to the audiences that we care about?
Tom Ollerton 06:38
So Tori... What can the industry learn from this campaign?
Tori Carter 06:43
I think being super clear about your objectives is really important because I think it's so easy to get swept away with a big creative idea. And I think there's always the watch out of making sure you're not talking to yourself. So, like, I think you can get a really, really clever idea from an agency and be like, "Oh my gosh, this is so us, this is so great." But if it's not actually driving a KPI or looking after what your brand objectives are that you've set out for the year, like, is it actually serving you even if it is a brilliant idea? 'Cause I actually think this is a brilliant idea. It's really, really fun. I think it just falls short in terms of them actually achieving potentially what they wanted to. And I bet there's no doubt they talked about a lot of these things that we're talking about today. So I think, you know, they probably identified these things in the reviews but then didn't quite make that leap to actually address them. So again, I think to reiterate, I think it's really around the messaging or the brand building piece of it not quite being dialed up strong enough to where it's clear what they were trying to get across or what they were trying to convey. What story were they trying to tell? It's a little confusing. Is it like, "Hey, get a discount with a, with a refurbished phone." Or, "Hey, save the planet." I'm not really sure. I don't know if it was about conversions. You know, we don't have the results, but if the PR fell so flat, it's probably likely that it, it didn't drive that much of a lift in sales with them. But maybe it did and maybe we're wrong and maybe they're watching and they're like, "Guys, you're wrong. We're now the biggest company in the world." Who knows?
Tom Ollerton 08:09
I think, I mean, I used to be an Innovation Director, and this is the kind of idea that you're trying to land everyday. Smart, use of technology, doesn't cost very much, and can potentially drive traffic and drive PR, so hats off to those guys from my perspective.
Tori Carter 08:23
I love the idea. I wish for their own sake. There have been some clarity and a couple of spaces on what it was trying to deliver.
Carmen Bryant 08:29
Yeah, they definitely got points for the idea and, you know, just being bold and disruptive. I also really like, as someone who and Tori, I'm sure someone who works on a global sort of, sort of campaigns. I also just kind of like appreciated how they had... They made it really seamless as to how they could sort of adapt this for different markets because certainly at Indeed we would always be kind of challenged with like how do we make sure that we are sort of bringing this to the various markets in a way that makes the most sense. So that was sort of like one small kind of execution element that I also thought was pretty, pretty compelling. As everything we've already said, there are definitely some, some missed opportunities here.
Tom Ollerton 09:12
Well, Carmen, Tori, thank you so much. We'll see you all next week.
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