eBay first launched its advertising business in 2008 and we worked with them on the launch. The core objective of the website was to showcase the various advertising products available.

In 2010 eBay's advertising business had grown and the needs of the site inevitably changed. The new head of eBay Advertising, Alex Marks, wanted to position the business clearly in the market, and the basis for this was the concept of consumer know-how.

The question was, how to turn the concept of consumer know-how into a reality, and allow eBay Advertising to use it to gain competitive advantage?

The Work

eBay has access to a huge range of information on buyers and sellers. So the website had to provide a way for, a portion of, this information to be displayed and grab the users attention. This was achieved through the creation of a knowledge hub, which included various in-page modules that could be re-used across the site. Their goal of these components was to provide relevant information that a user would be interested in, and to drive them towards the knowledge hub.

During our process of understand, design, develop and deliver we also found that the brand could be enhanced through other customer touch points. As an example, this lead to the design team creating various assets, such as email marketing graphics, that could be used by the various customer facing departments to re-enforce the concept of consumer know-how. These were heavily branded and could include, or be accompanied by useful information from the eBay knowledge-hub.

The point being, if you want to own 'consumer know-how' as a brand position, you need to re-enforce it every time your customer interacts with you.

The Solution

The final solution involved a website, press ads and various marcoms materials. The website was of course the star of the show and included a mixture of standard information users would expect from an advertiser's website as well as information that helped position eBay Advertising a thought leader with real consumer know-how.

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