2020 Brand Experience & Activation

HACK FRIDAY

TitleHACK FRIDAY
BrandLABEL EMMAÜS
Product/ServiceNONE
Category A07. Not-for-profit / Charity / Government
Entrant LABEL EMMAüS Paris, FRANCE
Idea Creation BRAINSONIC Paris, FRANCE
Credits
Name Company Position
Alban Penicaut Brainsonic Creative Director

Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

Hack Friday is a perfect example of a punch activation, a stunt which have made people and media talk about it with a basic installation. With the ambitious contrainst of 0 media budget, we met the objectives of Label Emmaüs and beyond : denounce the consumer society and the Black Friday without make the consumer feel guilt, promote a responsible and solidarity-based purchasing and gain notoriety.

Background

Label Emmaüs is the Emmaüs solidarity online shop initiated by Abbé Pierre and aims to offer an alternative to traditional online shops by promising a solidarity purchase. Indeed, it is the first integration company dedicated to e-commerce which, in addition to fighting against waste, helps train companions, employees on integration courses and people who have been welcomed, in the digital and logistics professions. However, Label Emmaüs is dealing with increased competition as there are many resale platforms: Ebay, Le Bon Coin, Vinted, Selency, etc. Events such as sales or Black Friday encourage the trend towards over-consumption and break new transaction records every year. The aim of the campaign was therefore to make itself known to the general public by denouncing this phenomenon.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

The Hack Friday campaign, with a slightly punk spirit, only required two racks of recycled clothing. This one is incredibly effective as it allowed a strong message to be conveyed with great resonance without emitting the slightest sound. A simple rack stopped on a pavement and a sentence: "Also available in a recycled version for solidarity" will have been enough to carry the message. It is a perfect example of newsjacking : this silent action made a lot of noise in the media world. A few days before Black Friday, we hacked more than a hundred clothing and furniture store shop windows by placing in front of it a rack transformed into a web window of the solidarity online shop. A cursor pointed to the new items in the windows and a message indicated that these also existed in "recycled and solidarity version" on the Label Emmaüs website.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

According to a study by Yougov, 79% of French people think that Black Friday encourages over-consumption. At the same time, Sweden is witnessing the rise of a trend linked to the shame of over-consumption: the "köpskam" which literally means the shame of shopping. This trend mainly concerns the fashion industry, which is the second most polluting industry just after the oil industry worldwide. In France, the Institut Français de la Mode jointly presented with FEVAD (Federation for e-commerce and distance selling) at Paris Retail Week last September a study stating that almost 2 out of 5 French people bought second-hand clothes in 2019. And 48% of those surveyed intend to buy more in 2020. With this action we wanted to reach out to the general public, make them aware of over-consumption and of course make the Label Emmaüs website known to as many people as possible.

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

Made up of a digital film, photographs and an influence kit, the Hack Friday campaign was relayed on the Label Emmaüs social networks, via the hashtag #LabelEmmaus and thanks to the journalists present on the hacking days. Indeed, to boost the visibility of this "punch" activation, we initially targeted journalists from different media. Contacted before the project, they had the opportunity to come and see the operation or to talk about it in an article. In a second stage, we relied on the sounding board of these journalists and the media to reach the general public. The campaign took place over two days of punchy action: 20 November 2019 and 6 December 2019. This was the first time that the online shop had run this type of campaign. We had no media budget. The campaign only cost us the purchase and customisation of two racks of recycled clothing.

List the results (30% of vote)

We have obtained more than 300 TV, Press, Radio and web coverage (Agence France Presse, L'Opinion, Le Point, Vanity Fair, TV5, BFM Business, France TV Info, 20 Minutes, Sud Radio, Ouest France, etc.) as well as the support of 40 influencers who generated 286 million impressions. In just 48 hours, the video of the stunt was seen more than 100,000 times.