The fashion industry is the second most polluting industry in the world. However, we’re buying more new clothes than ever before. The Swedish online marketplace Tradera have been pushing circular consumption for 20 years, and wanted to find a new way to reduce the purchasing of newly produced clothing. The campaign run just in time for the commercial feast of the year – Christmas – with the objective to get people to buy sustainable Christmas gifts and position Tradera as a modern company and innovative.
Describe the strategy
We identified the most-searched fashion items in December 2019 in Sweden and then rendered 3D models of those items. Each item featured a hidden message revealing a fact about the fashion industry. A sweatshirt bears the message ‘The fashion industry is responsible for 8% of global emissions’, for example, while a shoe is engraved with the words ‘The fashion industry is responsible for 20% of the world’s water pollution’.
Then we tagged these fake products with the same search engine data as the real products they were based on, to ensure that they appeared in Google search results alongside the real products.
Describe the execution
To urge consumers to choose sustainable Christmas gifts, Tradera hijacked Google during the most intensive period of Christmas shopping, and exposed internet shoppers to facts about the fashion industry. Two weeks before launching the campaign we posted the replica objects on Traderas site in order to get on the first page of Google in time. For serval weeks in december, Google interpret the replicas as sought-after products, and indexed them at the top of the search results.
We also wanted to scale up the campaign by media outreach and content on social media, telling our consumers and potential consumers about our sustainable initiative.
List the results
By doing this, we made Google interpret the replicas as sought-after products, and indexed them at the top of the search results. The replicas were on Google page one for two weeks. So, when people Googled for products like white Fila sneakers, H&M faux fur and Moncler down vest, they got exposed to uncomfortable climate facts. And many consumer decided they wanted to know more about the initiative and ended up on Traderas site and decided to buy second hand clothes instead of newly produced. Compared to the same period previous year, sales went up and the media impression was all time high.
Please tell us about how the work challenged / was different from the brands competitors
Traderas competition is not only players within second hand - it is also companies selling newly produced clothing. This campaign challenged a whole category and a consumer behavior, a bold move from a small player competing to some of the worlds biggest companies. It was an initiative reminding people that there are other alternatives than buying new things as a Christmas gift. For greater goods.