Russian drivers use airbrush art to not just brand their cars, but also to protect them. The eye-catching cars would be found much easier, in case they were stolen.

We used this social learning for a better cause. Uber, the ‘Search for missing children’ organisation and the Russian Ministry of Internal affairs commissioned artists to create the images of three missing children. We applied the eye-catching portraits of the missing children on partners cars in order to attract the attention of the witnesses.

Instead of aerography, we used car stickers with artworks illustrated in a way they would look like a real airbrush. This decreased investments of time and money in production and ensured the eye-catchiness of the artworks. The stickers were placed on the cars of Uber partners who volunteered for the cause. Drivers were advised to choose short trips across the congested city center to increase the visibility of our message. Uber users found out about the search through the app and others saw the cars on the streets, tv channels and social media.

We have found one of the missing children thanks to the witness, who reported about the potential location. In less than 2 hours after the official launch of the campaign, faces of the missing children appeared on the most popular websites, got featured on federal TV channels and kicked off conversations and posts across social media platforms. Search for Missing Children organisation received an inquiry from Uber’s competitor to join the project on a volunteer basis. For 0 media investment, we unlocked $1.2 million in earned media and reached 22.1 million people (estimated via similarweb and TNS tools).

There are 5.6 million cars in Moscow and the traffic is very congested. People spend hours stuck in traffic with not much to do except to look around. We saw potential in using Uber partners cars as a media. We attached eye-catching portraits of three missing children that would attract attention not only of other drivers, passengers and pedestrians, but also of the mass media. The goal was to spread awareness about the ongoing searches of three missing children and the unusual execution helped to get a response from the witness and resulted in finding one of the missing children.

The campaign’s budget was limited and paid media budget was zero. We decided to redraw missing children portraits in a very unusual and, probably, provoking way, so they won’t be perceived as just another missing children posters to which people got used and often don’t pay attention. We planned that this approach will generate a strong response in social media and attract the mass media such as newspapers and tv channels to get the earned media exposure. We also used Uber superpowers: app, CRM database and social media assets to attract maximum attention to the stickers with the eye-catching portraits of three missing children.

Spearheading the global sharing economy, Uber launched in Russia in 2014, aiming to connect car owners and people in need of a ride. With a team of digitally connected cars roaming a city’s streets, you can do more than simply drive people places. The brief was to come up with an idea for how the Uber fleet could be used for good in Russia. At the same time we discovered that every 30 minutes a child goes missing in Russia and analogue posters are still the most used tools in search campaigns. While 70% of any search relies on alerting witnesses the main search medium is often of poor quality and very low reach.