The Campaign

Year with Uber sits at the intersection of creativity, innovation, and culture, as a mobile experience like no other: a data-driven music video, personalised to each and every rider, based on their year’s riding habits. Created as a thank-you and a reminder of the role Uber plays in their lives, Year with Uber sought to build a deeper emotional connection with riders, setting Uber apart from tough local competition. The experience was simple, its complexity concealed. It drew from users’ trip data to create a modular music video generated from 5,000+ possible combinations. With scenes inspired by the vibrancy of modern Asia-Pacific, the experience elevated data beyond mere visualisation to a celebration of personal memories. A fun reflection of each user’s trip data and the unique way they ride.

Creative Execution

Enjoyment was key, with data as the driving force. Over 1,000 data points were explored, with 8 key data points selected as the backbone of the experience. Each data point was broken down into sentiments to create a more personalised story. For instance, for the data point ‘Total trips taken’, users were segmented into 3 sentiments: High, Medium, Low. Stories were extracted from these sentiments, 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, like Salt Bae and the fidget spinner, for timeliness. From these stories, an original modular track was composed, with lyrics that corresponded to each sentiment. Each video made unique by layering on the individual user’s riding stats as a super on top of the scenes. The experience ended in a ‘Rider type’ and a video for them to share on social media. Made for mobile, the share feature optimised for popular social mobile-led platforms in the region. It also accounted for the fragmented mobile market in APAC and was made to support a wide range of both Android and IOS devices.

Year with Uber received an overwhelmingly positive response, with 87% of users accessing the site from their mobile devices. Engagement was strong. The site saw 1.90M unique visits where users spent an average of 2.02 minutes on the experience - a 44% uplift from the previous year’s Year with Uber campaign. Once users started watching, they stayed until the end. 7 out of 10 people completed the full experience. 23% of which shared their personalised videos socially. The campaign saw a staggering 275% brand uplift during the campaign period compared to last year’s Year with Uber 2016. People loved it. Up to 64% of the users that saw the campaign recalled the main message and as much as 53% expressed positive change in their future intent to ride, firmly establishing Uber as a permanent fixture in their daily lives.

To mobilise Uber riders, the conversation had to be about them. The most personal way to achieve that was through their trip data. Personalisation was a key theme. Designed around the rider to ensure personal and cultural relatability, the experience was open to anyone with at least 1 trip in the 11 markets. Owned media channels played a key role in driving traffic to the site. So did people’s behaviour. Knowing that the majority of riders would access the experience from their mobile phones and on limited data packages, a lite mode was enabled where data bandwidth was minimised without affecting enjoyment. Share functions via popular platforms (Facebook, LINE, Whatsapp) were also activated, reflecting mobile use and behaviour. Due to the high device fragmentation in the region and use of both Android and iOS, research was done to define an experience that would accommodate most users.