Ruining Apple’s big day with actual innovation.

On September 12, 2023, Apple held their keynote, releasing the brand new iPhone 15 – their most “innovative” phone yet. Except, they didn’t mention that producing this brand new phone contributes to the fastest growing form of waste in the world : e-waste.

Not exactly, innovative.

BACK MARKET | R Phone

Let Them Buy New

Role: Assisted in Art Direction and creative conception of the OOH teaser campaign. Concepted, wrote and aided in the production of audio spots.

We think therefore we R.

But what if there was a truly innovative iPhone? One that’s sustainable, uses less fossil fuels and CO2, and costs way less? This innovative phone exists. But it’s not an innovation from Apple. It’s a refurbished iPhone—the iPhone R—and it’s on Back Market.

Under the guise of a mysterious Big Tech company that may or may not bear some striking resemblance to our friends in Cupertino, we teased the release of this “new” R phone. We contributed to massive OOH, straight out of the Big Tech playbook, and found our way onto a Times Square billboard.

Then, on the day of the Apple keynote, we revealed that Back Market were the ones behind all these cryptic hype tactics, and showed the world that a less costly, more sustainable phone can never be new. It can only be refurbished.

We think therefore we REFURBISH.

The full case study:

LET THEM BUY NEW.

The New One

After decades of brainwashing and slick advertising, we’ve all been conditioned to think that buying the new thing means buying an innovative thing. Completed by the Gus team, Back Market’s first ever global brand campaign called out Big Tech’s obsession with new and introduced refurbished devices as the actually innovative and more sustainable way to purchase technology.

We supplemented this work with audio ads.

Voice of Innovation

We concepted, wrote, and helped produce a Spotify ad that plays with the audio medium. Through the voice of an iconic female virtual assistant from the tech company named after a fruit, we tell the story of Big Tech’s voice of innovation realizing that perhaps the most innovative thing is not buying new.