MyTeksi is a smartphone-based taxi booking and dispatching service. The app has hundreds of thousands of users across Malaysia (the client prefers to not disclose the exact amount) and is available in English, Chinese, Malay, Thai and Vietnamese. MyTeksi can be downloaded on Apple’s App Store, Google Play Store and Windows Store for free. Users are able to book taxi rides with 46,000 taxi drivers across Malaysia who use the app to receive bookings.

This campaign aims to tackle two issues. First, many Malaysian taxi drivers have a reputation for being unscrupulous and unsafe. Second, Malaysia has alarmingly high rates of cases of kidnapping and violent crime against children.

To regain the public's trust towards taxi drivers, we turned them into a crime-fighting team by cooperating with the Royal Malaysia Police Force. With their new responsibility, taxi drivers are able to do good towards their community while addressing the public's negative perception towards them.

Rather than resorting to conventional campaigns, we enhanced the role of the taxi driver through a software update via the MyTeksi app called MyTeksi Patrol. This service is only accessible by MyTeksi drivers and forms a direct link with the Royal Malaysia Police Force.

MyTeksi was already an app used by hundreds of thousands of Malaysians and tens of thousands of drivers. We simply added a MyTeksi Patrol feature to the app that enables the entire fleet of taxi drivers to report a suspicious person or incident in relation to a reported kidnapping. This alert is sent to the authorities and can be shared to social media channels in real time. With geolocation technology already built into the MyTeksi app, when a child is reported missing taxis in the area are immediately alerted and able to keep watch for any suspicious activity.

Not only have we raised awareness for an important public safety issue, MyTeksi Patrol has also proven to Malaysians that far from being bad guys, taxi drivers represent a powerful resource as a civilian early response team against acts of kidnapping and violent crime against children.

By building MyTeksi Patrol into the pre-existing MyTeksi taxi-booking app, we also made the positive social effect of the campaign directly lend itself to the brand.

However, MyTeksi Patrol is not simply a PR campaign with an expiration date. It is a real, open-ended initiative that is continuing to allow taxi drivers to assist the police authorities with keeping the streets safe for the children of Malaysia.