Heading into the holiday season, a time of year when there are more celebrations and festivities, we wanted to more personally connect with Canadians to deliver the critical message of choosing safer rides home when drinking. But we needed this message to feel personally relevant.

Enter Uber Moms: an activation designed to disrupt the targeted riding experience with an important anti-drunk driving message told from a very specially-selected Uber driver: a mother who had personally felt the devastating loss of a child due to impaired driving.

Someone who’s own circumstance could be directly shared in the moment that matters most - riding home from a bar. But a local activation is limiting to drive national action, so we broadened Uber’s brand experience and introduced the “Late Night Hero” Compliment badge. This allowed late night riders to thank all drivers giving safe rides and through this compliment, donate $1 to MADD.

The core of the idea was to create an action that enabled Uber to come face-to-face with the real issue of impaired driving. We wanted to target bar patrons during party-filled December with our powerful message.

Following the free-ride activation, digital videos that recapped the experience were placed placed on YouTube and Facebook extended reach beyond just the driving experience itself.

Uber and MADD leveraged their database of members, riders and drivers to share the message through Email, Web landing pages, In-App cards and digital screens at the Uber Driver Support Centre. A joint press release with MADD was shared with trade. Finally, the Uber App was used as the donation vehicle via the Compliment Badge.

The core of the idea was to create an action that enabled Uber to come face-to-face with the real issue of impaired driving. We wanted to target bar patrons during party-filled December with our powerful message.

Following the free-ride activation, digital videos that recapped the experience were placed placed on YouTube and Facebook extended reach beyond just the driving experience itself.

Uber and MADD leveraged their database of members, riders and drivers to share the message through Email, Web landing pages, In-App cards and digital screens at the Uber Driver Support Centre. A joint press release with MADD was shared with trade. Finally, the Uber App was used as the donation vehicle via the Compliment Badge.

Canada is still the leader in impaired driving, despite decades of advertising in Canada to raise awareness. This campaign sought to move beyond an “ad” and disrupt the expected brand experience of driving with Uber.

By offering a free-ride activation with an Uber driver that was a MADD victim of drunk driving, we were able to create a genuine connection between the passenger and driver where the person getting a ride home after drinking could see, feel and relate to the impact of drunk driving first-hand – and reaffirm the right choice of getting an Uber in future occasions.

With such high rates of impaired driving, Canadians had clearly become desensitized to the familiar arguments. People believe they’re immune to these possibilities or detached assuming tragedies happen to other people.

Our approach was designed to reach an audience that crosses-over as high potential for Uber ridership and over-indexes in drunk driving, professional adults over 35.

Research from the Centre for Disease Control found Canada ranks first in impaired roadway deaths. Armed with a study that shows a decline in alcohol-related crashes in cities with ride sharing, we worked with Uber Canada to apply its reputation for disruptive thinking to this ignored problem on behalf of MADD.

Instead, we framed the issue in a universal and emotionally intimate way as the loss of motherhood. The impact of an impaired driving death is magnified when instead of affecting a nameless stranger the public is seeing, hearing and feeling the impact first-hand.

Situation: In Canada, over a third of road fatalities involve alcohol: more than any other developed nation. In November, Uber Canada and Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Canada, launched a partnership to remind Canadians of the consequences of impaired driving.

Brief: Knowing that Canadians had become desensitized to familiar arguments against impaired driving, our job was to find a fresh way to frame the issue for Canadians to reconsider how they get home when drinking.

Objectives: Reduce impaired driving in Canada by raising awareness of the issue and promote the decision to choose a safe ride. Develop a donation stream for MADD Canada.