New features and enhancements for eBay, together with an advertising campaign

Cristina Blanaru Ads, Business, Creativity, e-Commerce, Marketing

eBay launched Setify, a new tool that allows people to create collections from items on eBay and from other sources as well. Setify, available in private beta and available by invitation, allows people to track items they own, share collections and build wish lists.For now, Setify is still only limited to comic book and coin collections, but support for more categories of collectibles is expected to be added.

According to MandMglobal.com, eBay also introduced a “Feed” with a curated list of interesting items for users, presented in a Pinterest look-alike window. This redesign will roll out on Ebay’s US home page over the next 100 days, with a global rollout planned over the next year. The company will also create shopper personalities, such as the ‘Fashionista’ or ‘Do-it-yourself guru’, which users can browse for inspiration.

The checkout pages, previously a four-step process, are now streamlined into one, while Ebay’s new logo, designed by Lippincott, has also gone live.

The new initiatives comes a few weeks after eBay launched “When it’s on your mind, it’s on eBay” advertising campaign, signed by  San Francisco ad agency Venables Bell & Partners. The campaign targets and speaks to today’s “on-demand shopper” that prefers to shop anywhere, anytime with a mobile device.

Venables Bell & Partners tailored the campaign so it would targets shopping enthusiasts in categories such as fashion, motors and electronics, where eBay delivers personalized, custom experiences to help shoppers discover the top brands, retailers and products they want, at prices they want. Shopping enthusiasts use mobile devices to shop more than any other category of shopper, with 60% of fashion enthusiasts and 65% electronics enthusiasts owning  smartphones, compared to less than 30 percent of the general public.

When the company that revolutionized how people shop asks you to do something big and new, you get excited (…) For this campaign, we tapped into the psyche of passionate shoppers and then demonstrated why eBay is the answer.

Paul Venables

Founder & Executive Creative Director Venables Bell & Partners.

With a simple call to action, “Buy it new. Buy it now”, the campaign reinforces the shopping experience on eBay today. With every piece of creative enforcing the line – “When it’s on your mind, it’s on eBay” – the campaign positions eBay as the go to destination for shopping enthusiasts. The campaign includes 6 30 seconds TV ads, OOH with embedded QR codes in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles starting October 17, online and social media. Online ads will consist of takeovers on YouTube and Yahoo! and banner placements on Mashable, eHow, The New York Times, SF Gate, InStyle and Pandora.

The ads should be available on Ebay’s website, within Campaign section.