Commercialiser
letgo
Issue 40 | September 2016
Agency
CP+B Miami
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director Jay Gelardi Art Director Eliana Ferrer Copywriter Jay Gelardi
Production Team
Senior Producer Ian Kelly Producer Addison Born Interactive Producer Alexander Corr Technical Director Mike Bosch Music Supervisor Andy Hamm Production & Editorial Company Caviar Director Matt Villines Sound Design & Mix Company 740 Sounds VFX & Animation Company Visual Creatures VFX Creative Director Ryan McNeely
Other Credits
Account Directors Adam Barger Claudia Machado Content Supervisor Marshall Mann Content Managers Cristina Flores Brianne Goller Business Affairs Lisa Gillies Daphne Papadopulos letgo Alec Oxenford Federico Rucks Lucia Varela Federico Vazquez
Date
April 2016
Background
Pre-digital, selling second-hand stuff was primarily a local business, dominated by local press classifieds or specialist titles, effectively monopolist players in their chosen area. Then along came the likes of Craigslist or Ebay and everything changed.
Sellers and buyers anywhere could be put together, and the number of platforms proliferated.
For selling app letgo, the competition was fierce. Rather than get into a media spending battle, letgo looked to innovate on its platform to give its sellers an edge.
But selling second-hand items via classified ads is not exactly exciting, irrespective of the item, so the ads are rarely shared meaning a powerful and free medium is lost.
Idea
CP&B introduced The letgo Commercializer, the first and only way to create a million-dollar Hollywood commercial for someone's secondhand listing, without the inconvenience of spending a million dollars or actually going to Hollywood.
The Commercializer is a feature within the letgo mobile application that allows users to create TV-style commercials featuring the sale item. Once they've listed an item for sale in the letgo app, sellers choose from one of four glossy ad styles to have everything from the item image, the title, description, price, location and even the seller's name neatly woven into the action.
Techniques on offer include 3D motion tracking, rotoscoping, frame blending, motion blur, and dynamic audio. Once rendered, the commercial can be easily shared or broadcast in any way the seller chooses.
Making your own ad has never been so easy – a pick-and-choose menu is the starting point
Results
The Commercializer launched in April, and since then brand sentiment has hit new heights (100% positive).
About 10,000 commercials are made a day, with about 2,500 shares a day.
Letgo has since increased its market share by absorbing fellow classifieds start-up Wallapop.
Our Thoughts
It's the conundrum every secondhand seller worries about: how do I make my ad better/funnier/stand out more/reach more people?
It's also the conundrum facing any online sales platform: how do I help my users sell their stuff better?
That way lies the virtuous circle of interested buyers and happy sellers.
In the old print days, it was all about circulation and reach. As far as the ads were concerned, sellers could just buy bigger ads to achieve stand out.
CP+B Miami's Commercializer is fizzing with fun and energy. Who doesn't dream of creating their own TV ad, even for the most humdrum products, and then sharing it with the widest possible audience so they can enjoy the artifice, say, of selling a model helicopter in an action-style film?
It's also commercially-savvy. There are not many ways for smaller online platforms to build competitive advantage in a world where scale is almost everything, but helping sellers create (and have fun) making their own ads gives them a reason to choose one platform over another.