eBay‘s latest ad flips the script on “sadvertising” and nostalgic feelings to reach young French consumers with humor. 

eBay‘s latest ad flips the script on “sadvertising” and nostalgic feelings to reach young French consumers with humor. The online shopping platform launched “The Camera,” a new ad that will be shown in movie theaters and on small screens in the next few weeks. In this short video, a Gen Z daughter helps her Boomer dad reconnect with photography by repairing his old Nikon camera, and finds all the spare parts on eBay, of course. With its dark filter, smooth background piano music, and tears from the main characters, at first glance, the video is a perfect example of “sadvertising,” which aims to appeal to nostalgic and sad feelings from the viewers. But eBay flips this script by cutting the music short and turning to humor when the dad excitedly throws the camera aside to open eBay on his phone. eBay is also wanting to establish itself as a vintage-yet-trendy online platform, with the ad ending with the following tagline: “The website that never left is back.” YPulse consistently reports how nostalgia has been a big trend among marketers in the past few years, and the 2022 version of the trend was to bring back Y2K musicians. (AdWeek)