Helping DiDi say ‘thank you’ to healthcare workers
Our work
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At some point during the recent COVID-19 crisis, every marketer has been in a meeting where they are asked, “How do we help?”. It’s a common theme at a time where most industries find themselves without a product to market, while essential services are completely overwhelmed.
One particular group who have witnessed a sudden influx of work and attention to their industry is our healthcare workers – the nurses, doctors, case workers, paramedics and more – who are putting their lives at risk every day and have truly had an extra impact on society in this current climate.
As a way to thank them for their enduring and life-saving assistance throughout the Coronavirus pandemic, rideshare service DiDi developed a service dubbed DiDi Hero, offering healthcare workers safer and sanitised rides to work at half the price.
To ensure they could feel all our love and gratitude, and to get the word out, we created a social campaign asking the community to share their messages of thanks to Australia’s healthcare heroes, which were then delivered in-app to frontline workers during their DiDi Hero trips, and billboarded across DiDi’s social channels. We were overwhelmed with the response from Australians, using their creativity to share their message of thanks (and they just keep coming!)
We also created a short video that followed three real frontline workers on their DiDi Hero rides to work, only to be met with a surprise call from Michael, a recovered COVID-19 survivor, to share his touching personal message of thanks with them.
“This campaign is a celebration of humanity, a message of hope, expressed directly by a COVID-19 survivor to the real heroes that have arisen during this global crisis,” said our executive creative director, Edu Pou. “The experience of Michael, the recovered patient at the other side of the phone, is very personal, but his broken voice speaks for all of us.”
With an extremely tight turnaround and heavy lockdown restrictions, the video was shot and edited in a week by our We Are Social Studios team, with footage captured using in-car cameras so that no crew were required during filming to keep in compliance with current regulations.
Douglas Toy, Head of Marketing at DiDi Australia, said: “Australia’s healthcare workers have been at the frontline of this healthcare crisis, and this campaign is our way of expressing our gratitude from the entire DiDi community.”
With hundreds of submissions from the public and various creative news outlets picking up the story, the gratitude of the nation for healthcare workers is clear and DiDi has helped to drive this message of appreciation forward.
We couldn’t be more proud of this work, and hope you’ll like it too. If you would like to share your comments or ask any questions, just drop us a line.
Credits:
Client: DiDi Australia Head of Marketing – Douglas Toy Marketing & Customer Strategy Manager – Rosie McFarlane Marketing Specialist – Katie Penwell Senior Digital Designer – Hallan Moulin
Agency: We Are Social Australia Executive Creative Director – Edu Pou Creative Director – Bob Mackintosh Senior Editor – Zoh Dowling Illustrator – Sylvia Leo Senior Designer – Jamen Percy Executive Producer – Thea Carone Strategy Director – Shaun Profeta Account Director – Ben Mayor Senior Account Manager – Cece Chieng
Production: We Are Social Studios Director – Bob Mackintosh DOP – Jordan Maddocks Editor/ Post-production – Sam Wickham Sound Design – Simon Kane/ Song Zu
