Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

A recent study named Metro Manila as the second city with the worst traffic in the world (TomTomTraffic Index 2020). This commuting challenge makes it difficult to date someone or meet with friends from north if you’re from the south, and vice-versa. It becomes worse during holidays like Valentine’s day where commuters can be stuck on the road for more than 3 hours – that’s already a whole date night! That’s why Sakay.ph created in-app feature, Sakay Halfway, so couples can set a date at location convenient to both parties, and meet halfway fair and square. Perfect for Valentine’s day.

Background

Sakay.ph is a commuter’s app developed to guide Filipinos in their day-to-day commuting adventures in the busy roads of Metro Manila. To increase brand awareness and drive more app downloads and usage, Sakay.ph launched an in-app feature to solve one of the biggest barriers to love and relationship – distance and traffic.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

Commuting in the Philippines is already a big struggle for everyone. But on a holiday or a special day like Valentine’s day? You’d rather stay home and postpone a date. So in time for Valentine’s day, we launched Sakay Halfway. The in-app feature of Sakay.ph that calculates a couple’s fairest midway point based on distance, travel time, and real-time traffic update. A list of possible public places (such as restaurants, bars, hotels, etc) near the halfway point is then shown to the user.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

In the Philippines, there is a long-standing joke about Northerners and Southerners, those who live on opposite ends of Metro Manila, who blame "geographical incompatibility" as the reason for most break-ups. The strategy was simple -- exploit the available technology in the Sakay.ph app to solve the age-old question of where to meet a significant other if you live far away from each other.

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

We launched Sakay Halfway on the season with high relevance for couples –Valentine’s Day. We published the main video material on Facebook, and created posts in IG and Twitter demonstrating how to use the in-app feature, and encouraged people to download Sakay.ph. We created some really interesting social content as well, based on how couples used Sakay Halfway. For example, 12km is the average distance between couples and they eating at Jollibee (a leading fast food chain). The favorite halfway meeting place? A love motel, of course (blush).

List the results (30% of vote)

More than 10,000 couples used the app to meet halfway last Valentine’s Day! We got over 1.3M total campaign reach and 250K additional app downloads in the duration of the campaign. Sakay Halfway also exceeded the Click Through Rate industry standard of 0.90% with a 10.59% CTR and we achieved over Php 5.7M in terms of PR value with minimal spend.