In 2022 Vestiaire Collective began banning ultra-fast fashion brands like Shein and Primark from its platform to drive forward the fight against overproduction and overconsumption.

In 2023, the company took the next step and began removing the most famous fast fashion brands, including H&M, Zara, and Gap. The brief was to shock and mobilize their community via a social-first video and hyper-local imagery, inspiring them to take real action by pledging to shop pre-loved on their own social channels.

The objective was to educate consumers on the impact and the importance of building better shopping habits, driving them to take a collective stand against fast fashion by embracing secondhand. Through this educational content, Vestiaire Collective also aimed to spread their message and their mission to a new audience, with the objective of driving organic reach and growing followers and new member sign ups.

The idea was simple: Vestiaire Collective has seen firsthand the impact of fast fashion on people and the planet. How do they get others to experience this emotive and shocking reality?

The answer was to transplant the waste into the Western world, and more precisely Times Square in New York - a location symbolic of consumerism - through a video that would engage, shock, and mobilize their community to change their shopping habits, and encourage new audiences to adopt pre-loved, circular fashion. For an even bigger impact, the video was launched on Black Friday: a day renowned for its rampant - and often unnecessary - consumerism.

The creative idea was found internally and realized through a CGI hero video, produced in collaboration with an external agency. A suite of localized, AI-generated imagery was also created in-house and used across Instagram and TikTok as a rallying cry to their community.

Vestiaire Collective releases an annual report on the positive impact of consuming pre-loved fashion with regularly refreshed data. The company also works hand-in-hand with The Or Foundation to get the latest data on the impact of fast fashion in the Global South. The campaign began by laying out the key data from these reports to support their claim.

The target was their existing community, as well as new prospects with an interest in fashion. By naming some of the banned brands in the video, they also hoped to reach their founders and owners. This resulted in the CEO of Zara’s parent company reaching out to Vestiaire Collective to discuss their sustainable endeavors.

By collaborating with key opinion leaders on social media, they reached an even wider audience, incentivising viewers to share the content for a chance to win a Vestiaire Collective gift card to start their sustainable shopping journey.

It took the team five months to build the strategy, concept, and execute the campaign (including over the summer holidays). There was a limited budget to support the concepting, production, and amplification.

The approach was to aim for organic earned reach, fueled by some small investment to ignite the sharing. Vestiaire Collective used their own Instagram channel as the hero launch placement, with a coordinated drop of paid headlines with Diet Prada and Stylenotcom on the same day.

This was supported by a dedicated landing page on Vestiaire Collective’s website, as well as a blog post, onsite banners, notifications during the customer journey, and additions to the website’s FAQ section. A product listing page (PLP) which showed affordable alternatives to fast fashion, available to purchase, was also launched as a destination for social users to flow through to.

Reach: 625m impressions generated (+28% vs target = benchmark 2022 Fast fashion ban campaign where 487m impressions were achieved). 20m of these on instagram alone.

Engagement: total 450k engagements (Engagement Rate on IG 20.7% vs average FY 0.12%). Including 1000's of positive comments, pledges and re shares of the video.

PR: 76 press clippings, and 908 Newswire pickups.

In-app business KPIs: 5000k new members signed up at their lowest cost per new member since mid September 2023 (the biggest spike from the US market unseen for the brand before). There was also a strong conversion to new buyers.

The campaign was a standout success for the business tapping into a deep cultural momentum and converting into true action.