Gumtree tackles lowballers and timewasters in new ‘Keep Gumtree Real’ campaign via Pollen
Gumtree has today launched a new campaign ‘Keep Gumtree Real’ via Pollen that aims to improve the buying and selling experience by encouraging trust and responsibility.
Gumtree has tackled this head on by once again collaborating with former TV host Jason Dundas to create a light-hearted, content-led campaign, which offers tips on online etiquette and buyer and seller best practice.
Says James Walmsley, senior marketing manager at Gumtree: “With over seven million Australians visiting Gumtree each month, we’ve built a community of people who love to search, discover and find unique items.
“As a result of being an online marketplace, on occasion people often think they can get away with behaving in a way that they normally wouldn’t in person.
“Keep Gumtree Real is about encouraging buyers and sellers to treat each other as they would in real life and to ensure their experience is as seamless as possible.”
Launching with a series of creative videos hosted by Dundas that offer tips on buyer and seller best practice in a light-hearted way.
These include:
· Write an honest description: Be upfront, honest and accurate when listing an item.
· Be a time saver: While it’s great to shop around to see what’s available in the community, be respectful of other people’s time and hold off meeting up with a seller until you’re serious about buying an item.
· Show up on time: If you’ve set a time to meet a buyer or seller, stick to the plan and show up on time. If you can’t make it, that’s fine, just let the person know as soon as possible.
· Negotiate fairly: Do your research and negotiate on a price you think is fair – not an unrealistic amount.
· Be responsive: If you’re going to be unreachable for an extended period of time, simply pause you’re listing so you don’t keep people waiting.
By following these tips, Gumtree users will be able to improve sale time and build a good reputation within the platform’s local community, making it easier to have successful transactions in the future.
To complement the campaign, Gumtree has also announced its latest platform updates that are also aimed at encouraging trust and reliability. This includes the addition of profile pictures and trust markers on a seller’s profile page which show average reply and response rate.
The campaign will be executed across social and owned channels and will be targeted at both new users (signing up), as well as existing users in an effort to improve user behaviour.
Creative Agency: Pollen
Production Company: Dundas Media
PR: Fuel Communications
17 Comments
Is this what our industry has become?
Low budget content and how-to videos?
If you look at the last 20 CB posts, it certainly seems like it.
Ahh, ads. How I miss them.
This is a well put together execution – all the info and the way it’s been entertainingly gathered up is great.
My grip is – There’s a killer flaw in Gumtree. And that is probably the issue with the brief this agency got, which they have done an admirable job at. I’ve tried selling a car there and it was a nightmare.
The operational flaw in Gumtree is anonymity. People can get behind a keyboard and phony SMS spoofers and misrepresent themselves, and you can’t rate the buyer or seller.
Which means people misbehave constantly and nigerian scammers and low ballers txt you in the dead of night with inane questions like ‘best price?’ and when you respond in a decent way they don’t reply. I put my car on and every weekend I was fielding a flood of enquiries at 2am to the point where I thought it would blow up due to non-genuine enquiries.
Drove me bonkers, they have a lot to fix. Not sure what the magic bullet is, but it’s not one execution. As nice as it is. But well done on the Vid guys – I do like it.
Yeah they could ramp up their security and block any IPs that create accounts made from outside Australia.
Cool. A free lecture from Gumtree. Will we be tested on this?
@Dunno hey: Answer you yes, clients, agencies and production companies have screwed everyone down the line for the almighty dollar, we get the advertising clients deserve.
The 70s were the best. Miss them so much too.
Why would Gumtree do a release about a piece of content like this? Just makes them look desperate for press coverage.
This won’t work. Would be better if they had a troll/ time waster 3 strikes you banned policy. I recently used gumtree and never will again majority of users are rude and inconsiderate. FB Market place seems more genuine for buying and selling but then it could be trolls from facebook sabotaging gumtree who knows these days in a world gone mad?
I have found an easy fix for time wasters, when I receive an email about something I am selling I respond to it asap as normal, then I wait a couple of days, if I have no response back from the sender I then add them to my blocked list, problem fixed, as I believe that I was being targeted by someone and I was getting many false messages, and stupid offers so on.
The biggest problem with gumtree is the anonymity and this allows people to be serial time wasters and pests with no repercussions.
George
So sick of people wasting my time by messaging me than not replying
There should be a merit system and if you strike to many times your account gets deleted
It’s only fair as the time wasted is enormous.
I’m generally thinking of not using gumtree until they fix the issues with time wasting messages from people who just have nothing better to do.
Maybe add a commitment to purchase
Hi there.. the scammers now are asking for my email address via the Gumtree “send a message to the seller” function.. basically, it’s like this.. the buyer and myself ping pong back and forth about the item I’m selling. The scammer will then say “can we use email instead of gumtree ??”.. I then ask the scammer to ring my mobile as I don’t give out my email address.. basically, they never ring your mobile and they want to get your email address to harvest it and sell it to other scammers and spammers.. please people, never give out your real email address.. I’ve created a dummy email address purely for Gumtree
if someone wants to apply to a gumtree add they should have to give there e mail or phone number like the person selling has to to if they dont then they should not be able to access the adds I for one have had enough of people wasting my time and will find another selling site If I put an add on G T within seconds there is the same message every time Hi’is this item still available? can someone at G T explaine this
What a load of trash. Messages from others, responding to your ad and making low ball offers and a reply with a polite “no thanks” can and does result in their nose out of joint and then one or several rude and abusive emails. Gumtree have absolutely no interest in protecting sellers from those special people who abuse others. When a viable method to block an abusive user is made available, THEN Gumtree can start being “real”.
It’s exhausting going back n forth with people asking you to hold an item. People should only reply if they are able to pick up the item the same day. I hate holding items.
I put on my adds do not message or mail me use the phone number & phone me.
All I get is messages & gumtree mail why can we not remove the gumtree mail if we don’t wish to receive mail seems pretty simple to me.
I was requested my personal email by 2 people within 5 minutes of my add being posted thismorning.
Give us options to stop this rubbish.
If I get a message from someone & there’s not one please, hello or thank you, I just delete the thread without opening it. Gumtree sends all messages to your email. So I check my emails first, read the message then open the gumtree app, go to messages & swipe left, hit delete without opening the message & the person doesn’t get the “read” notification. I don’t do no manners. One guy just said, “I want your items for my home so what’s the email to discuss further”
Couldn’t scream SCAM loud enough. Gumtree has message box there to negotiate. But not without simple manners first. No qualms giving someone the cold shoulder. A polite conversation is a two way street.
I am ninety-two and I have only once sold anything on Gumtree and that was a car. As I was typing the ad I was inundated with people wanting it, I sold it to the first person that called and everything was settled in two days. I realised later the reason why so many wanted it, I had underpriced it. So this experience lulled me into a sense of false security, but my latest attempt to sell, not or me but for an elderly lady in the aged care facility that I am in, has been a nightmare, getting messages from people who say they want the items, from Gumtree saying people have reserved them but there’s no follow up on any of them. I now want to withdraw them from sale and put them on Facebook but I can’t find an option to do this. The likes of Gumtree Goolgle, Facebook and all other platforms (I hope that’s the term) are constantly pushing for you to upgrade andmake more money, as if they don’t already make billion from selling us to us and we are nothing more than slaves. I have always had a philosophical thought that the world since we climbed down from the trees is based on ‘Need and Greed’ once we have what we need it then becomes greed. And it’s all around us.