Relove preloved fashion

Blurred Minds

30% of goods donated to Australian charities end up in land fill.

After a deep learning phase O-it was created to increase the quality and to maintain the quantity of goods donated to Australian charities. O-it aims to help facilitate a new movement promoting circular fashion, making donated goods fashionable, attractive and desirable.

O-it was created using our 3-step social marketing process: co-create, build, and engage (CBE).

Read on to learn how we applied the CBE process to build O-it.


Figure 1 - The CBE process

1. Co-create

We learned from stakeholders (council workers, charity managers and staff, government officials) and more than a thousand Australians. We found the most common barriers to donating are frustrations around op shop opening hours and a lack of opportunities to donate. O-it was co-designed with 40 citizens. They created a program that would work for them and people like them.

Main Partners
NACROGriffith UniversityQueensland Government

2. Build

Our first two pilot programs ran in January 2020:
  1. At Loganholme we trialled a communication only campaign that featured cinema advertising, a shopping centre activation point where flyers and donation bags were distributed (see Figure 2), direct mail and social media advertising (Facebook and Instagram) to reach a target population of 6,000 residents.
  2. At Cannon Hill we used the same communication approach and we added a pop up store (see Figure 3) to sell preloved fashion directly to the public. The pop up sourced all shop fittings second-hand and it launched with a curated series of second-hand clothing provided by our charity partners.

Cannon Hill Activation Point

Figure 2: The O-it activation points and the donation bags

The O-it activation pop up store

Figure 3: The O-it activation pop up store

Additionally, we created a campaign website www.o-it.com.au featuring a clothing sorting tool, a map of all the charity donation points and stores in both suburbs and more.

3. Engage

The January 2020 trials featured delivery of:
  1. 6,372 mail pieces
  2. 4,228 emails of which 1,551 emails were opened
  3. A project website visited by more than 1,000 people
  4. A Facebook page viewed 1,179 times and liked by 446 people
  5. An Instagram account attracting 185 followers
  6. A press release and Channel 7 news story reaching ½ million Australians
  7. Cinema ads that reached over 100,000 locals.

Recall rates were 3x higher in Cannon Hill (6.3%) than Loganholme (1.7%).

Donation quality and quantity across all measures increased in Cannon Hill and amount to landfill decreased 3 times (from 45% to 15%). 178 kilograms of clothes were donated to the research team and 90% of these goods were usable. The O-it pop up generated more than $1000 for Australian charities in just nine days with a 65% customer conversation rate.

Charity Partners
Endeavour FoundationLifelineLink VisionSalvosSave the ChildrenVinnies

Figure 4: Outcome change observed in both our community trials

*The scales are anchored from −3 (negative) to +3 (positive)

Figure 4: Outcome change observed in both our community trials

Intentions to donate increased significantly in Cannon Hill (p<0.001) but not in Loganholme (the communication only trial). We also observed a significant improvement in people’s perceptions about the ease of donating in both trials (pspace < 0.01; ptime < 0.01; and plocation < 0.01).

We gave out over 1000 donation bags and we had over 500 conversations with locals that came to our pop-up site and activation points. Watch this space for more updates as we progress with our work in the months and years to come.

If you want to learn more, get in touch with Dr Ville Lahtinen at v.lahtinen@griffith.edu.au.