December 2018. France was living through one of its largest social upheavals, the Yellow Vests movement. In that climate, positive interactions with Uber had dropped to 23%. The brand needed to remind people of the magic they had felt the very first time they opened the app and a car appeared.
We created six life-sized toy cars, each one designed from scratch to look exactly like an oversized toy rather than a vehicle made of toy materials. Deployed in Paris, Zurich and Vienna for the Christmas period, they were bookable directly through a new button in the Uber app: UberToys. Free rides, first come first served, for one month.
The cars were visually impossible to miss in traffic: moving billboards that stopped people mid-step, made children point from pavements, and generated the kind of social media content that cannot be planned or purchased. The original feeling, the one that made Uber feel like magic, arrived again.
Over 80 pieces of press coverage. Shared by over 200 social accounts. Campaign ran across digital and press.
