How do you challenge a ubiquitous competitor like Uber when you are a French ride-hailing app with no media budget?
By hijacking our competitor's food delivery service, turning it into our own media, and having our competitor delivering straight to their audience all the good reasons they should switch to Heetch, in addition of delivering the good meal they have ordered of course!
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 / insights (30% of vote)
We’ve transformed Uber Eats into Uber Heetch. The first Uber service that delivers its competitor's ads. To promote Heetch and its advantages, we’ve printed our messages on more than 12,000 meal boxes. Then we have offered those boxes to some of the most popular restaurants on Uber Eats. And voila! Our competitor did the rest.
The messages printed on the meal 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 favourite 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 to reach the perfect audience for Heetch 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 effective for each message etc...
Then we printed 12,000 packages 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.