Background

A recent study named Metro Manila as the second city with the worst traffic in the world (TomTomTraffic Index 2020), so dating someone outside your city is a logistical nightmare. Sakay.ph is a commuter’s mobile app developed to guide Filipinos in their day-to-day commuting adventures in the busy roads of Metro Manila. To increase 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

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 updates. Establishments, restaurants, and other facilities near their ideal halfway were also part of our recommendation.

Describe the strategy

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. We also utilized easily accessible and available data that no apps in Philippines have ever used before – halfway points. This is to help couples commute their way to each other’s heart with just a few taps on their phones.

Describe the execution

To ensure that our in-app feature arrives at a perfect halfway point for couples, we used machine-learning to create 30 simulations that test 300 combinations of routes between each party. We then launched Sakay Halfway on the season with high relevance for couples – the 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. To amplify buzz about the campaign we seeded PR articles to top publications in the Philippines. 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

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.