Unwanted Gifts
Role Lead Designer/ Creative Director
An annual Trade Me campaign that reimagined unwanted gifts through emotion. By giving Kev (the Trade Me mascot) expressive eyes, frustrated when unwanted and heart eyed when rediscovered, the campaign created a simple, human way to show how second hand items can find new love.
Challenge
Unwanted Gifts is a yearly Trade Me moment, which makes it increasingly difficult to keep the idea feeling fresh while maintaining strong brand recognition.
The campaign needed to clearly communicate both the frustration of receiving an unwanted gift and the delight of discovering something new, while working consistently across social, paid, onsite and lifecycle channels.
Approach
I introduced a simple but flexible creative idea by using Kev’s eyes as the emotional driver of the campaign.
By shifting his expression from annoyed to heart-eyed, the same visual system could represent both sides of the story, turning unwanted gifts into desirable finds. This created a clear, scalable system that felt unmistakably Trade Me, while opening up a new emotional range within the brand.
Result
The campaign delivered a fresh interpretation of a familiar moment, helping reframe unwanted gifts as valuable listings rather than dead ends.
The use of Kev’s eyes was widely recognised internally as a new and effective extension of the brand system, and the work supported listing behaviour while reinforcing Trade Me’s role in giving items a second life.
Campaign emails
