Pivot
In 2020 I was asked to participate in Pivot, a month long exercise to imagine a new brand for eBay.
I along with 20 designers I was hand picked to pitch our own visions for the future based on research and learning’s about the current state of the brand.
The Process
After discussing interviews from Sellers and Buyers during a week of workshops, as well as gathering cumulative data around sentiment for the brand and the product itself, I began to see a couple common themes.
From the very beginning eBay has been a pioneer for e-commerce, primarily an innovator of concepts like online reviews and auctions. Key to this success was giving communities tools to find items safely and discover other fellow enthusiasts. Those were the early days, but since then the world has changed, and with it our social tools have evolved to allow for richer experiences with communities.
eBay focuses heavily on an item centric view of the market, while the world pivoted to more human focused experiences online, creating more and more ways for communities to build and meet each other. The earliest version of eBay was in touch with this idea, but our modern brand and product put the emphasis heavily on the items for sale, not the people behind them.
eBay also has a trust problem, in part because it portrays its product as a traditional e-commerce store akin to Amazon or Target, when in reality it’s a marketplace full of a diverse set of sellers and buyers. It’s a place full of people and people are complicated.
Together eBay
Keeping these challenges in mind, I sought to envision an eBay that re-captured our early passion for community building, telling the stories behind the products for sale. The real value of items on eBay aren’t the items themselves, but the story they tell, and the people behind those stories.
I was tasked with describing this new eBay.
The new eBay is known as a place for enthusiasts to find community. Collectors and explorers are the center. Customers tell their stories about what they found and who they met. The brand elevates the lore of items, highlighting the people who discover and share hidden treasures on the platform. Those who gather at eBay are who make it so special.
On this foundation, I began to explore the brand conceptually through storyboards.
I then gathered themes that would be the foundation for this new brand, paired with attributes to give dimension, informed by my explorations.
The new eBay is…
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Opinionated, empowering, innovative
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Honest, playful, friendly.
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Opinionated, empowering, innovative
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Consistent, trustworthy, reliable.
With these established, I now had a guide for establishing brand primitives.
What does a real, spirited, smart and dependable brand look like?
At the end of the event, we all presented our concepts in full with the goal to inspire the brand team as they began exploring new directions for the company. I’m proud to say that my vision continues to be used as inspiration for an on-going rebrand project behind the scenes. It is my hope that the final result for eBay’s new brand will reform the product around the people we serve by creating a stage where our passionate community can shine and be an inspiration to anyone looking to start their own selling business on eBay.