"Best marketing I've ever seen": Back Market's powerful iPhone ads have viewers floored

Apple's 'Shot on iPhone' campaign has been running since 2014, when it began by showing off the camera capabilities of the iPhone 6. And while our best iPhone for photography roundup might look very different today, the ads look pretty much the same – highlighting a high quality photo taken on Apple's latest iPhone.

But if you think the photos themselves haven't changed a great deal, you're not alone. In an ingenious campaign launched earlier this year, second hand tech merchant Back Market launched it's own spin on the 'Shot on' concept, highlighting not only the relatively incremental improvements to smartphone cameras over the years, but the damage to the planet too.

Titled Let's End Fast Tech, the campaign gives a new, urgent purpose to those 'Shot on' iPhone photos, showing just how much the environment has changed in between smartphone models. For example, a 2012 photo of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, taken on the iPhone 5, is placed alongside a photo from the same angle taken by the iPhone 11 in 2019. While the former is rich with waterfalls, the latter, taken during a drought, is bone dry.

“E-waste and fast tech are global problems that need global awareness and solutions. We must start the conversation around the impact of our reliance on technology by illustrating how our environment has changed between smartphone model releases” said Joy Howard, CMO of Back Market.

“Today, advertising doesn’t do enough to promote sustainable consumption. And yet, it plays a vital role in raising awareness in the face of the contradictory pressures we face daily - encouraged to buy more, while also being told to be responsible.”

And the campaign has proven a hit online, frequently reappearing on social media. "I was unprepared for how gutted these would make me feel," one Threads user comments, while Substack user declares, "This is some of the best marketing I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t try to be witty, sarcastic, or make the viewer feel bad—it’s just straight up, there for anyone to see."

Indeed, perhaps the ingenuity of the ads is how the concept manages so effectively to communicate two of Back Market's core values. It highlights both the absurdity of 'upgrade' culture, and the effect that it has on the planet.