Putting Heetch, a French ride-hailing app, on the map of its main competitor clients. This is what this campaign is all about.
To convince Uber users of choosing Heetch for their next rides, we have hijacked Uber Eats and have made them deliver our own messages directly to their consumers: Uber Heetch.
It was the first time a brand hijacked the Uber ecosystem to make them promote their competitor straight to their audience.
Background
With cheaper rides, better-paid drivers and 100% of taxes paid in France, Heetch is the fair alternative to Uber in France. Unfortunately, this message is hard to get noticed as Uber is absolutely everywhere.
With a very limited budget (15,000 euros) and no media budget, we needed to think about a campaign that will create enough noise to raise awareness around Heetch. A campaign that will convey the brand vision as well as its will to fight against its giant leader.
Describe the creative idea (30% of vote)
How do you challenge a ubiquitous competitor like Uber when you are a French ride-hailing app with no budget? By hijacking their food delivery service, turning it into our own media, and having our competitor delivering straight to their audience all the reasons they should switch to Heetch.
We transformed Uber Eats into Uber Heetch. The first Uber service that delivers its competitor's ads. We printed our messages on more than 12,000 meal boxes. Then we offered those boxes to popular restaurants on Uber Eats app. And voila! Our competitor just had to deliver our ads.
The messages printed on the boxes:
“We too are hungry, but not for our drivers’ money.”
“What about taxes, delivered in France or abroad?”
“We won’t make you change your favorite meal. Just your ride-hailing app.”
“Eat American style, move French style.”
“Your pizzeria pays its taxes in France. Why not your ride-hailing app?”
Describe the strategy (20% of vote)
Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber's CEO said that: "The current strategy at Uber is to significantly increase the percentage of our monthly active consumers who use both of our offerings (Uber and Uber eats)"
Our strategy was therefore simple: by reaching Uber Eats consumers, we had very good chances of reaching Uber users as well.
Describe the execution (20% of vote)
We started by identifying the right restaurants that were willing to follow us and we built the operation with them: What would be the best packaging, which formats were the most popular, which boxes would be the most adapted for each message etc...
Then we printed 12,000 meal boxes according to all French food standards and each restaurant secretly received the boxes that would match the food they were selling.
All they had to do was wait for the D-day to start to use our packaging for all the orders they would receive from the Uber Eats app.
And so, it began on the evening of Sunday 21st March, the night of the week when Uber Eats is most active, until they all ran out few days later.
List the results (30% of vote)
+ 23% brand preference
+8% intent to try
and 7,8 million media impressions with 0€ media invested, we succeeded in putting Heetch on the map.
Taking the lead on the leader of the category to express our vision by allowing consumer to ask themselves the right questions and realize that riding with Heetch is a better choice for everyone.
Please tell us about how the work challenged / was different from the brands competitors
It was the first time a brand hijacked the Uber ecosystem to make them promote their competitor straight to their audience.