Imagine you’re at a bar. Across the room, you see a stranger in a familiar item of clothing. As you meet their eyes, you realize they’re wearing the same sweater you sold on a secondhand fashion site five years ago.
This serendipitous encounter actually happened to one former user of Depop, said Kelley Barrett, creative director of Uncommon Creative Studio, the agency behind the resale platform’s latest campaign. Barrett recalled reading the anecdote on social media, where another user commented, “There must be a reason your paths crossed.”
“We wanted to play up that poetry,” Barrett said. “A complete stranger is taking your item and wearing it–what if there’s this deep connection between you?”
Today (Sept 2), Depop launched its largest U.S. ad campaign to-date, “Where Taste Recognizes Taste,” based on the idea that a shared sense of style can inextricably link people from worlds apart.
Uncommon, which expanded its partnership with Depop from the U.K. to the U.S., dramatized that feeling through a surreal ad in which a man’s sweater begins to unravel. One of the strings pulls him across city streets, offices, houses, and landscapes, until he finally meets the person on the other side of the yarn: a woman who bought his sweater on Depop.
“The initiative celebrates unexpected connections—those moments where someone just gets your taste—and spotlights ‘Depopelgangers’ who find their style twins through shared fashion preferences,” said Sonia Birdie, interim chief product officer and marketing leader at Depop.
The campaign will roll out nationwide across out-of-home, streaming radio, connected TV, and paid social.
Resale’s explosive growth
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in London, Depop, now a subsidiary of Etsy, has a global user base of more than 43.5 million people and is the fastest growing resale platform in the U.S., according to Birdie. While it’s well known in the U.K. and among Gen Z, it wants to broaden its appeal across geographies and demographics.
“When we partnered with Uncommon, the brief was to shift the perception of resale into a broader cultural space,” Birdie explained. “We wanted to develop a bold, culture-driving idea that would resonate with new audiences, while still appealing to our core demographic.”
