The Campaign

While any ridesharing service can get you from A to B, Uber understands that the reasons we travel - from everyday moments to new life experiences - are what matters most to customers. From this insight, Year with Uber was born: a web experience that celebrated Uber customers’ 2017, by turning their trip data into a personalised music video. For customers, it was entertaining content, highly personalised and shareable; its complexity concealed to create an effortless, engaging user experience. Behind the scenes, things got a little more complicated. An engine was built to pull together relevant lyrics and scenes to generate 5,184 possible video combinations. All based on each individual’s riding habits - their total distance traveled, most ‘Ubered’ time of day, even the cities they’ve ‘Ubered’ in. The result was a hyper-personalised music video with a modular structure, making no two users’ experiences the same.

Creative Execution

To mobilise Uber riders, the conversation had to be about them. The most personal way to achieve that was through their trip data and riding habits, leading to an exploration of over 1,000 data points from Uber’s API to find the ones that mattered most. 8 most interesting data points were selected to tell riders’ stories; like number of trips taken to whether they were a Weekend or Weekday Rider. Stories were extracted from these data points, inspired by life in Asia-Pacific. Filled with believable, relevant slice of life, scenes showed cars, people, and animals commonly sighted around the region. Festival scenes were included for cultural relevance and 2017 viral sensations. No matter how many trips a user has taken, they are sure to find a relevant story. Enjoyment was key to the experience, but data was true driving force. To create a true data-driven film, the 8 key data points had to become the backbone of the experience from which the modular scenes were crafted. Personalisation came in the form of breaking down the data points to define the sentiments. For instance, for the data point ‘Total trips taken’, users were segmented into 3 sentiments: High, Medium, Low. Stories used in the modular scenes were first written as 200 scripts to capture the dynamism and cultural nuances of the region. From these scripts, an original modular music track was composed, with lyrics that corresponded to each data point’s sentiments. Enter hyper-personalisation, where each music video was made unique by layering on the individual user’s riding stats as a super on top of the music video. The experience ended in a ‘Rider type’ and a video for them to share on social media. Data wasn’t merely integrated into the story. Data was the story.