Ebay and Love Island on sparking an affair with pre-loed goods
Weber Shandwick and eBay UK have won the Media and Entertainment category at The Drum Awards for PR. Here is the award-winning case study.
Check out the award-winning campaign
Summer is notorious for impulse buying, with more than a third (37%) of the nation purchasing their summer outfits just a week before jetting off, and 24% admitting they bin their clothes after going on a trip.
In a bid to tackle unsustainable summer shopping, eBay coupled up with Love Island for season ten, becoming the first-ever pre-loved headline sponsor. But after two successful seasons supplying pre-loved gems for the on-screen villa, eBay needed to show up in a fresh way to drive behavior change off-screen.
Strategy: To spark a new conversation around pre-loved, eBay coined a new phrase, Single-Wear-Summer, and used the partnership with trend-setting Love Island to promote pre-loved fashion at key points throughout the season. Before season ten launched, the public were invited to list their pre-loved outfits on eBay for a chance to have them worn by the Islanders in the villa. Our Pre-Loved Style Director Amy Bannerman then curated four different trends to send to the Islanders and previewed them with the hottest fashion media and influencers. As the Islanders wore our pre-loved gems, we used the opportunity to raise awareness of different sustainability issues in fashion. For example, on the first party of the series, eBay supplied second-hand denim and issued a targeted press release to media shining a light on the issues around unsustainable denim production. When the show wrapped, eBay launched a charity auction, so the nation could get their hands on the pre-loved looks that had been worn by their favorite Islanders – with 100% of the funds being donated to Oxfam. We even brought eBay’s marketplace into the real world with the first-ever pre-loved fashion vending machine in Paddington Station, so that people heading off on their own holidays could get last-minute outfits, second-hand. To ensure pre-loved wasn’t just a summer fling, we rounded off the partnership by announcing Love Island’s Tasha Ghouri and Tom Clare as eBay’s first-ever pre-loved ambassadors, a landmark moment that interrupted the trend of Islanders signing contracts with fast fashion brands.
Results: Throughout the partnership, eBay saw genuine consumer change, with shoppers voting with taps and clicks in the direction of pre-loved. Searches for pre-loved fashion on eBay UK increased by more than 1400% in series nine compared to series eight, and one pre-loved item was sold every second on eBay throughout 2023. Additionally, research from ITV revealed that consumers who watched the show were more likely to purchase pre-loved clothing as a result, with one in two (53%) of Love Island viewers during series eight saying they’d bought preloved in the past three months, more than double the amount for those who hadn’t watched or been aware of the collaboration. Furthermore, eBay experienced an almost 20% increase in pre-loved fashion listings year-on-year since the partnership launched in 2022, as well as a 24% increase in new circular businesses joining the online marketplace in 2023. For series ten alone we secured nearly 300 pieces of coverage across broadcast, national, lifestyle and trade, including in The Times, Drapers, Grazia and Heart FM. This Morning even called out the marketplace for its fashion leadership, saying “eBay really is way ahead of the pre-loved game”.