Episode 126 - eBay Wear 'Em Out Ad Reviewed by L'Oréal, MPB and Automated Creative

When some buyers or bots get a hold of all unique sneakers and resell them at a massive price, what can a reseller brand like eBay do to help true fans?

In their Wear ‘Em Out ad, the popular marketplace website shows a unique initiative: asking people to immediately get rid of the “box fresh” quality of their new shoes by wearing them through mud and gravel in a pop-up shop.

Does this ad chosen by Contagious do enough for the sneaker reselling phenomenon? What’s its benefit to the brand itself? And what do our guests Alex Taborda (Senior Media Manager at L’Oréal), Patrick Williamson (Head of Global Media at MPB), Dan Moseley (Managing Director, North America at Automated Creative) have to say about it?

Watch the latest episode of Advertisers Watching Ads to find out!

eBay Ad Reviewed by L'Oréal, MPB and Automated Creative

Transcript is automatically generated, so not perfect, but you get the idea!

Tom Ollerton 0:00

Hello, and welcome to Advertisers Watching Ads. This is a weekly show where brands watch other brands' ads.

Tom Ollerton 0:20

My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative, and this week, we are brought to you as ever by our partner, Contagious. So thanks to those guys for helping us choose this week's ad. But before we get to this week's creative, let's meet this week's guests.

Alex Taborda 0:33

Hi, I'm Alex Taborda. I'm Senior Media Manager at L'Oreal within the Luxe Division.

Patrick Williamson 0:37

Hi, I'm Patrick Williamson. I'm the Head of Global Media at MPB which is the world's largest platform for buying, selling, trading photo and video equipment.

Dan Moseley 0:45

And I'm Dan Moseley. I am the North America Managing Director for Automated Creative.

Tom Ollerton 0:50

What a panel! Right. So, let's see this week's ad.

Tom Ollerton 2:49

We're gonna score this ad for its chance to win ad of the year. So marks out of five... One, two, three... A four, a four, and a four. I think that probably puts eBay in first place so far for the year. Well done, guys! I am completely lost on what this is about. Could someone explain to me what is actually going on with this campaign?

Patrick Williamson 3:18

I think I'm the same as you, Tom. This subculture was a bit, a bit new to me. So I went down a bit of a rabbit hole of discovery after watching this ad just around the whole topic or the fact that more than half of sneaker heads... They wear less than half of the sneakers that they buy so there's a bunch of people out there who are buying the, buying these sneakers on eBay, other, various other platforms as well. And yeah, there's a bunch people who've made a lot money out of this so... Buying trainers brand new as soon as they go on sale and then, and then putting them straight on eBay, you know, selling them for double, triple the price.

Alex Taborda 3:49

I am actually a, an on-and-off sneakerhead. I actually lost out on a pair of trainers on Friday, a collaboration between Palace and Adidas so this is like totally, totally of the moment for me and I'm actually a little upset about it but... My understanding is that the way that eBay did it was they sourced these, these, all of these kind of really in demand and kind of really well-loved trainer, different types of trainers as new but the twist on it was that in order to unlock cheaper pricing, people had to physically walk through the gravel, through the mud so that the trainers could then be, they couldn't just take the trainers at a lower price and then put it on eBay later down the line. So it was kind of making them not box fresh anymore.

Tom Ollerton 4:30

Right...

Dan Moseley 4:31

There's an analogy that... different in area that Tom might understand. But that's the thing I can imagine you collecting. Imagine if The Beatles had issued trading cards that were pristine and brand new, and then you asked to tear the corners off them and touch them and kind of rough them up a bit. I think that's probably the closest to where you're at.

Tom Ollerton 4:51

Okay, thanks for explaining contemporary culture to me, but what I don't understand is how this solves the problem. How does this solve the problem of people just, or bots, buying a pile of trainers and selling them off cheap?

Alex Taborda 5:01

eBay, arguably, had done more than anyone else to kind of enable this type of behavior, this kind of sneaker resale economy because they make it so easy for people who are managing to get these, these trainers to put them straight online and sell them at a huge profit. And what they're doing or what they are doing in theory with this activation is kind of flipping on it, flipping on its head and actually offering the buyer some respite from that and allowing them to, to access to the traders that they want at a cheaper price. I think the problem with it is that I have not seen how this then extends out beyond this activation, it does a good job at trying to repaint eBay in a new light as being on the side of the buyer. But how that kind of extends beyond that initial activation? I'm not sure.

Patrick Williamson 5:39

How does this make more people more likely to buy more trainers on eBay? I mean, to me, it would have made more sense, it was linked to kind of maybe more of a statement around, you know, how eBay is sort of, you know, protecting buyers on the platform, ensuring, you know, people don't get ripped off, people get fair prices. I think it was definitely much more in the realm of kind of a PR move to just connect kind of eBay with the concept of reselling trainers on their platform, but it was kind of like, it didn't really seem like to me, is it going to deliver on kind of like, what is a kind of brand promise from eBay to their customers? So yeah, that was kinda to me felt like a little bit of a missing link. Great PR idea and experiential activation, looked amazing. I think, you know, they kind of gained, obviously, a lot of kind of earned media around that. But yeah, I wasn't quite sure where it kind of, you know, from a kind of, eBay product proposition standpoint, where it kind of fitted in.

Dan Moseley 6:35

I guess, in this market, you've got people who have your sneakers, your absolute mint, untouched, box fresh. And then you've got companies like Depop, that kind of sell or kind of quite used almost like thrifting style approach to reselling. And it does do something interesting in putting eBay, somewhere in the middle where you're almost not so unattainable. There's completely brand new, it's untouchable, it's too expensive. It's not been kind of worn and loved for a few years, and you kind of sit in a really nice middle space, so I wonder if it's a bit of a positioning exercise for them too.

Patrick Williamson 7:06

I think there's a real opportunity in this space actually, like, you know, the kind of the world of layers, recommerce as a kind of topic, different reselling options, particularly the world of fashion. We're in the electronics, sort of business of reselling... Yeah, there's a big kind of trust barrier here for a lot of people. Particularly, comes to kind of peer-to-peer selling and knowing, "Am I getting a fair price? Am I getting the product that I want? Is it authentic?" And I think that maybe they could have played a little bit more on the kind of you know, eBay being a destination you can trust. Yeah, that to me felt that maybe the sort of the, the missing link, I suppose.

Alex Taborda 7:36

The industry that this economy reminds me of most is tickets. As obviously the massive PR around the Taylor Swift tour that went on sale recently that sold out immediately. People buy the tickets and sell them on for huge profits. And obviously, it's always the buyer or the person or the fan, or the person who actually wants these things to that, that has to ultimately pay more or doesn't actually get what they want in the end. Because if the scalpers got it and sold it for a price they can't afford. So I totally agree that was there was a big opportunity for eBay to do, to use this PR activation as a, as an initial hook to get people in. And then to kind of roll out what their proposition is for buyers and prospective buyers. And I think, I've not seen that certainly, and it's obviously not in the, in the, in the video.

Dan Moseley 8:16

I watched this at face value and thought, my initial takeaway was they've done this really well. And they've, they've kind of hit that. But actually, you know, talking about it today, the thing that's really interesting is actually sneaker culture is a bit kind of golden ticket locked off to a certain amount of people. You've got influencers who are inflating the price, they get pre-invited to get the sneakers rather than you know, your average Joe getting a chance to have them. And actually, does this activation, continue to lock up all of that access to anyone invited to a thing? You know, it sort of puts it slightly out of reach of other people. I wonder if it does kind of just keep perpetuating the myth that you can get them one at a cheaper price, but you'll never really get the pristine brilliant valued first editions if, if that, if it makes sense. So yeah, it's interesting. I think that didn't come across, first time I watched this, but the more and more I talk to you guys around it, it does feel like maybe that's a bit of an issue for positioning.

Tom Ollerton 9:14

Right. So we're at the end of the episode now, so there's two things. First off, this is a thumb up or thumb down vote on would you sign off this campaign in its entirety in its current form? Yes or no? Yeah, three thumbs up. Well done, guys. Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you all next week.

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