Built Different - Inspiring audiences through real stories

​

With an inventory of millions – far larger than any competitor – and upwards of 20 million active users, eBay is a leader in the automotive parts and accessories (P&A) market. But despite its extensive inventory, eBay wasn’t top of mind among its community. Customers eventually came to eBay after failing to find what they were looking for with competitors.

Heroing eBay's unrivalled inventory and the value it offers, the fully integrated ‘Built Different’ campaign was crafted to improve awareness and perceptions of eBay’s automotive P&A category. It aimed at increasing market share and effectively engaging a broad audience of people with unique levels of interest, skills, and experience; ultimately convincing them to choose eBay first.

The campaign celebrates the real and unique passions of eBayers. It highlights the wonder and aspiration driving their vehicle building, repairing and upcycling projects; representing a new and innovative approach in the automotive industry.

Leveraging real audience data, we developed six bespoke personas that truly represented who the campaign needed to speak to. Through this, we identified the one thing that unified our diverse audience despite their varying needs: their tenacity to take things into their own hands. 

The central idea bringing these communities together, ‘(You’re) Built Different’, celebrates the range of eBayers from amateur DIYers to passionate tinkerers, inspiring motor enthusiasts to do more for themselves by showing the results of the moment it all just… clicks. 

From the customer profiles, we wrote (and cast against) six real stories, each delivering a consistent and broad-reaching through-the-line message to our audience. These six stories became our campaign's overarching thought and building blocks. 

The unifying narrative was authentically and consistently woven into every aspect of customer interaction, successfully positioning eBay as a platform that serves diverse audiences in the automotive space. This allowed us to disrupt a vertical dominated by very functional marketing with a fresh and more emotive and authentic campaign.

We took a modular approach with the campaign, as it utilised multiple channels including TV, OOH, social, event sponsorships, email, and onsite marketing. In total we created more than 600 assets from this one concept, highlighting consumer truths that enabled eBay to resonate with a broad audience. This allowed us to flex the narrative from 6-second to 30-second placements across digital, social, AV, VOD, cinema, and even 37 bespoke idents for three different channels (including eBay sponsoring the Channel 4 show Bangers: Mad For Cars). 

Across the board, the campaign has surpassed all our brand build objectives, including a 4ppt increase in category awareness, a 3ppt increase in perception scores across range, trust and sustainability, and a 2ppt increase in market share across the category. 

On top of surpassing its primary objectives, ‘You’re Built Different’ emerged as a benchmark in how integrated campaigns can weave together disparate threads of brand communication into a coherent and compelling story that prompts more profound connections and engagement. Driving these overarching results, the effectiveness of the campaign led to a 3.8pt uplift in awareness, a 3.7pt rise in associations, and a 1.4pt increase in motivations. 

The emotional resonance of 'You're Built Different' allowed eBay to appear authentically at major automotive events for both brands and consumers, including the Goodwood Festival of Speed and the British Motor Show.

By shining a light on those who transform broken into new with a little help from eBay, we helped establish the marketplace as the destination where enthusiasm is fuelled and rewarded, whether your passion is fixing cars, building classic motorcycles, or just looking for that hard-to-find socket set.