Uber India encourages every woman to go the distance and bring every opportunity #WithinHerReach

The Opportunity

India’s lopsided commuter gender ratio is often overlooked. Unlike men, many Indian women water down their professional ambitions to take up jobs close to their home in order to juggle domestic responsibilities and corporate demands. In addition, their mobility and long-distance travel often prompt family and friends to raise questions about their safety and scrutinise their choices. As a result, 81% of Indian women travel less than 5 km each day for work and 3 in 5 women limit their job opportunities to 1km from home.

The ‘Gender Commute Gap’ - a result of reasons like uneven gender roles, prejudice, safety and lack of reliable travel options - has been holding women back from going the distance to chase their dreams. However, it’s a fact that has been overlooked and never spoken about.

This International Women’s Day, Uber India (@Uber_India) decided to put the spotlight on this gap. The brand kickstarted an eye-opening conversation on Twitter India, driving the audiences’ attention to this issue and encouraging them to bridge the gender commute gap and bring every opportunity #WithinHerReach.

Campaign Date: 8th March 2020

Campaign Objectives

• Leverage the occasion of International Women’s Day to start a conversation that challenges the societal biases against women

• Mobilise the power of conversation in addressing the unspoken truth of the gender commute gap

The Strategy

Uber India (@Uber_India) chose Twitter to lead the conversation on the gender commute gap.

• On International Women’s Day 2020, Uber India (@Uber_India) launched a social experiment on Twitter. Through an impactful video, the brand showcased the disparity in how far men and women travel for their jobs each day. The video spelt out women’s ambitious goals, and compared them to the distance they actually travel each day to keep their careers moving.

• Through a series of Tweets, Uber India (@Uber_India) encouraged people, especially women, to share stories that resonated with the truth of the commute gap. The conversation thus built further as people clicked on the Twitter Conversation Card to talk about their experiences.

• The conversation was scaled through a Promoted Trend for #WithinHerReach, and a First View for the campaign video.

• It was further amplified by collaborating with influential voices on Twitter and bringing their stories of bridging the gap to life.

The Impact

• The promoted trend #WithinHerReach garnered 7.14 million impressions, which is 17% more than the industry average.

• #WithinHerReach and associated keywords saw 24.1K mentions across conversations.

• With 67,769 Tweet engagements, @Uber_India’s messaging was driven home.

• The campaign video garnered around 440.5K video views.

• Mentions of @Uber_India went up 9X during the campaign.

• Sentiment Analysis showed a 13% increase in positive sentiments for the brand.

Spokesperson Speak

Commenting on the campaign, Lucinda Barlow, senior director marketing APAC at Uber, said, "Women in India are much more likely than men to trade-off bigger work opportunities for a shorter commute or give up on their dreams altogether if their commute is too long. This has given rise to a phenomenon called the 'Gender Commute Gap'. Our campaign, launched on International Women's Day, aimed to raise awareness about this issue and help bridge the gap by providing women safe and reliable ways to get to work and fulfil their dreams. This was a digital-led campaign with Twitter playing a key role in the mix. We worked with Twitter on three major ad properties for #WithinHerReach - First View, Twitter Trend, and Conversational Cards, to reach and engage our audience. The campaign resulted in an 11x increase in conversations around the gender commute gap on Twitter, helping kickstart our goal to create movement on this issue."

(We go this information in a press release.)