Back Market refurbishes football stars’ old phones

Tapping into the excitement of the World Cup, Back Market, the refurbished tech marketplace, has launched a campaign featuring Bundesliga stars Joel Fujita and Connor Metcalfe. While fans often ask for players' shirts, the campaign goes a step further and asks for their phones. 

While shirts are a treasured piece of football memorabilia, the campaign ‘The Players’ Drop’ considers whether a player's phone could be the next fan collectable. Back Market has refurbished the old phones of Fujita and Metcalfe to give supporters the chance to own some unique memorabilia. 

To launch the campaign, German football influencer @gianna_fs hosted a film starring two ‘secret agents’ that set out to collect the players' devices. The agents secure the phones and get the footballers to sign them before handing them over to be refurbished. The dynamic film builds hype around the devices. 

Gianna then asked fans to craft their own placards asking for the phones of the players or post photos of their signs at the team’s Millerntor Stadium at a match.

"Refurbished tech should not feel like a compromise. It should feel desirable in its own right. With The Players' Drop, we found a way to make that idea tangible by turning a player's phone into something fans would genuinely want to own," explained Alexandra Brandt, Head of Marketing EU at Back Market.

The Players’ Drop campaign was created by Back Market alongside creative agency INNOCEAN Berlin. It has already generated 9.9 million views across YouTube and Instagram, tapping into the goliath of football fandom.

The culture-focused campaign helps to reposition refurbished tech as desirable, underlining that old devices are unique and can be filled with stories.