Gumtree Embraced What People Really Thought of its Re-commerce Site and Turned That into Creative Go

A new article on ADWEEK says that every brand needs a platform that sets it apart from the competition, and asks how do existing brands break new ground?

In this video, Wieden+Kennedy and re-commerce-site Gumtree share how they harnessed the power of creativity and YouTube targeting to create the campaign “Good Finds” and stake a new claim in the online marketplace space. Here are some lessons they learned along the way. It’s hard to persuade your audience to see your product in a new light if you don’t understand how they see it now. That’s the view of Brain Ritter, planning director at Wieden+Kennedy:

When we talked to the audience, we realized they would be like ‘sometimes you have to sift through a lot of things to find the thing you’re looking for’… but they took a lot of pride in that.

Hannah Rouch, CMO at Gumtree, explains that when you understand what’s true about your brand, you can unlock powerful creative ideas:

Because we’re people-powered, there are typos on listings … or a selfie when someone’s selling a mirror, but that’s the beauty of Gumtree–and ‘Good Finds’ embraces that.

The team found that harnessing a truth that’s unique to the brand provides a launchpad for interesting creative ideas, which are hard for competitors to replicate, but the simplicity of an idea also adds to its impact. As does targeting the right audience ensures its success. Freddy Taylor is a senior creative at Wieden-Kennedy:

These ‘sales tropes’ … these annoying things invade normality, and then they’re banished–all in 20 seconds. We hit everyone with the 20s and then surprised them with the 6s