Why Creative Salon Loves Vinted’s Live Better For Less By WPP Media

Take Netflix’s Queer Eye and cross it over with Stacey Soloman’s Sort Your Life Out, and you have Vinted’s Live Better For Less, a relatable binge-worthy series, with inspirational storytelling that moves sorting home clutter to the top of the to-do list.

The series, created by WPP Media and Banijay Entertainment, showcases a mission to help people save money for what's really important in their lives and encourages a change in lifestyle that both benefits themselves, and the planet. It’s an awakening experience that reveals the power in breaking habits, and highlights that what's hidden away could actually be treasure, helping to save money for more things that are worthwhile.

There's a weird satisfaction in looking into people's houses, observing their shopping behaviours and looking at what random things are hidden under the bed. Watching the show allows viewers to see themselves reflected in the families involved, demonstrating that everyone can change lifestyles, shop and sell second-hand and live better for less.

The second-hand marketplace had sales nearing £1bn last year, surging by more than a third as buying and selling second-hand items booms. It offers a way to create an internationally-scalable branded form of entertainment, in a format that each marketplace across Europe can relate too.

With seven specialist hosts with likeable personalities each in different countries, the show faces a multitude of challenges, bringing authenticity and reliability across several different cultures. However it delivers heartfelt stories that joins the countries together with a perspective that each viewer can recognise themselves with.

Developed with the partnership of Adapt, the next generation AI model for translation, each episode was able to be effectively translated in each country for each episode. That means seven episodes, seven translations, amounting to 49 episodes altogether, an almighty task.

Combining voice generation and visual lip sync with expertly trained linguists and audio experts, the technology makes translation feel so seamless that viewers can forget it's even there and allows the audience to be fully engrossed in each episode's story. To efficiently localise content for each market while maintaining the authenticity of the original performances showcases an ambition to drive a really watchable series for a large audience to enjoy.

It goes without saying the scale of the project is something worth recognising. With a multilingual show airing across four channels across Europe, it’s a bold step forward for how brand and entertainment can come together to create something truly bigger than what could've been achieved alone.

Each host, with Motsi Mabuse, leading for the UK, brings a personal charm to the project, all with their own backgrounds in fashion, broadcasting, and lifestyle. They all share a passion and love for Vinted, staying true to what the brand stands for. They also all bring their own cultural perspectives imbuing a richness to a project while tackling the overarching problem of clutter.

The screening, which took place earlier this month, had four of the hosts, Poland’s Agnieszka Witkowska, Spain’s Juan Avellaneda, Germany’s Riccardo Simonetti and Chimène van Oosterhout from The Netherlands celebrating the experience and filling the audience with their honest experience with the Vinted Project.

The evening showcased two episodes of the series, following a British couple and a Polish couple, before bringing the hosts together for a panel that felt more like a reunion between hosts than a formal Q&A.

Simonetti says “Doing this show, we’ve learned that we’re all essentially the same. It’s nice to see that we’re all very different and come from very different cultures. But in the end, we’re all the same. We have the same habits and the same impulses to buy things to make ourselves feel good. So it was really nice to see that we’re very different, but ultimately we also have a lot in common.”

Avellaneda adds: “When you see the whole series, you don’t feel like it’s an advertisement. It feels very natural, and I think that’s really clever. We all make advertisements, and they’re usually written very strictly. Here, it felt like one part of the process within the story, and I think that works really well.”

Witkowska continues: “I think Vinted is a natural part of the process of decluttering and organising a space, because it’s not only about selling; it’s also about buying things. So I think it feels very natural.”

Sam Grindey, from WPP, said on the panel that Vinted understood the power of long form content immediately and that with the help of Electric Robin and partners, they had been able to create entertaining TV that resonates with people which showcases human storytelling within that. He said: “You have to start with great TV first, and then it can become a great brand platform because people are engaged in what you're saying. They're not doing something else while watching it. They're choosing to engage in it.”

The series airs on Prime Video in the UK, France, Germany, and Spain. For the Netherlands it airs on RTL 4, Poland on TVN Style, and Italy on Warner Bros. Discovery’s Real Time.