We gave every Sam in New Zealand and Australia free Uber rides for a whole week, in order to activate an army of ‘Sambassadors’ who could then answer people’s Uber questions. So if anyone had a question about Uber, they knew exactly who to ask - their friend Sam.

The offer was extended to celebrities, social influencers and everyday Sams alike – who all became walking brand advocates overnight, able to endorse the Uber experience to their friends and family and share their specific experience relating to how easy it was to book a ride, the safe drivers, on time pickup and drop offs, even how clean the cars were.

An integrated campaign across Social, PR, TV, print and digital, highlights included filling an entire street with real Sams to launch the offer online and changing the name of the Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Herald Sun to the Samday Telegraph/ Samday Herald Sun in print and online for a day - the first time the masthead had been changed in NewsCorp history.

Our campaign needed a face to it, so we set about finding two of the hottest Sams at the time in each country. In New Zealand that was two of the countries most loved sports stars New Zealand All Black’s Sam Cane and Sam Whitelock. For Australia that was Bachelorette and radio personality, Sam Frost and Bachelor star Sam Wood.

The campaign followed a social-first approach with a higher media spend allocated to social, encouraging the public to engage directly with our Sambassadors a.k.a. their friends named Sam.

In just a week, we had recruited 16,766 unpaid Sambassadors, turning the nations’ most common name into an army of influencers. In New Zealand, the Sambassadors influence yielded a 35% increase in weekly rider sign-ups (the most in the brands history), whilst Australia saw an extra 100,185 bookings in just 3 weeks. The campaign proved to be Uber’s most successful social and earned campaign across ANZ.