Als wir die teuerste Ebay Auktion in DACH verursacht haben..

author: Daniel Scheuch

date: 2/8/2020

So what would you do, if the sale of an entire brand fails by all the conventional channels you know? You shoot up an influencer in the air and lo and behold, the sale works.

It’s 2020, the operators and brand owners of BLOB Europe are trying to start a new personal chapter after 10 years of having a successful business. Therefore, they want to sell the company including the European brand rights. Efforts to do this by all conventional ways, such as external consultants and trustees, have failed, so something new and creative was needed.

The idea

The sport of "blobbing" is usually practised on water. An oversized air mattress serves as a catapult for the "blobber" sitting on it. One or two "jumpers" jump from a tower onto the BLOB, so the blobber is catapulted into the air and eventually into the water.

As part of our campaign how we can sell this thing, we wanted to portrait this sport in a way that it would be going viral on social media. "Regular" blobbing is well known thanks to Ö3 tours or Nitro Circus; a classic jumping video - even though it is spectacular - would have little potential to spread on the networks. However, we questioned ourselves, how to top such an action-packed sport?

We conceptualised the phenomenon of "car blobbing" with a car as a "jumper" falling from a crane and an influencer as a "blobber" in the tension between fake and non-fake. Location of the stunt: a junkyard and aiming for a 28-metre high jump the blobber should not land in the water, but on a small landing mattress!

How did we implement this?

With the stunt being accomplished, a content piece was staged between real (world record!) and fake.

As an initial teaser, influencer Stefan Petrov posted a picture of himself sitting on the blob starting position, suggesting: Behold, something crazy is coming up.

A few days later, he announced the stunt in his Instagram story, followed by a 13-second clip with the "car-blobbing stunt" on Blob Europe channels without anx further explanation. This video went viral on Facebook, Instagram & TikTok within a few days.

The hype was picked up by numerous online portals (Heute, OE24, Wallstreet Online) and Facebook pages (Ö3, Arabella, eBay Germany).

Concluding the viral movement an announcement clip was published, stating that the company will be for sale in an eBay auction. The result: Multiple serious interested investors and a highest bid of over 85,000,- after 10 days! According to eBay, by far the highest completed auction for a brand on eBay in DACH region.

What was the result?

2 million impressens and 1 million views were achieved on all channels, followed by interaction rates of up to 20% on the social media channels.

The topic was widely picked up in online media, including Heute, OE24, Wallstreet-Online, Ö3, eBay Germany, and many more, as well as features in B2B trading media channels on their front pages and well known newsletters (Horizont, Leadersnet).

Clipping List:

In addition, attention from thousands of shares - including major social media sites - can be mentioned as well. On the platform TikTok, which was still quite new at the time (end of 2019 during our planning), over 360,000 video views and 1,700 followers were achieved within 48 days with a completely new user account.

Saving the best for the last

Unser Resume lautet daher

A huge success and perfect use case showing that a well-planned strategy can make even complex products like brand rights tasty.

In a visually driven world of Instagram & Co, aesthetic products can be promoted excellently without a crazy amount of effort, but the example of BLOB shows that significantly more is possible if you combine the right tools with the right partners in a sophisticated strategy!