Swear on our mom's life

Back Market, a leading global marketplace for refurbished tech, unveiled a new global campaign built around a simple, high-stakes idea: to launch The Back Market Promise, Founder Thibaud Hug de Larauze swears on his mum's life to vouch for the quality of their tech, and if they break their promise her life is yours, every single thing.

Directed by renowned comedy director Harold Einstein, the film sees Founder Thibaud stand behind The Back Market Promise in the most personal terms a person can offer, with his mother, Valerie, at his side and all her earthly belongings at stake. It is a big, funny, deliberately over-the-top expression of a serious commitment: that refurbished tech on Back Market meets a standard customers can trust completely.

The idea tackles the single biggest barrier to refurbished tech adoption. Despite growing awareness of e-waste and overconsumption, many consumers still default to buying new because they assume refurbished means compromised. The Back Market Promise is the company's answer, and this campaign launches it to the world.

Thibaud Hug de Larauze, Founder of Back Market, says: "We wanted a way to make The Back Market Promise impossible to doubt. So, we picked the highest stakes a person can offer. If people remember one thing about Back Market after this, it should be that we don't make this promise lightly."

The Back Market Promise is made up of three elements: 30-day free returns, a one-year warranty, and an up-to-100-point quality inspection on every device.

Joy Howard, CMO, Back Market, says: "Trust has always been the thing we had to earn. This campaign puts everything on the table. The quality of refurbished tech on our platform today is genuinely competitive with new, and it's time consumers felt that confidence too. When Thibaud stakes his mother's life on it, we're not doing a stunt. We're telling the truth, loudly."

The film centres on the relationship between Hug de Larauze and his mother, playing the extravagance of the gesture against the quiet steadiness of the woman beside him. Her presence, her reactions and the looks between them do as much work as the words, turning a bold claim into comedy with real warmth underneath.

Tomas Coleman, Executive Creative Director at Mother, says: "The truth about Back Market's quality is genuinely remarkable, so the challenge was making people believe it. The most powerful thing anyone can do to prove they mean something is stake what they love most on it. Harold understood immediately that the bigger and funnier we went, the more the sincerity underneath would land. That tension between the ridiculous gesture and the real promise is the whole idea."

The campaign launches this month in New York across TV, video-on-demand, out-of-home, social and audio, before rolling out across Europe in August, in the UK, US, France, Germany and Spain. It builds on Back Market's ongoing "Let's End Fast Tech" platform, which challenges the technology industry's culture of constant upgrades.