Citymobil’s Birthday

Objective

In honor of the company’s birthday, share the story of Citymobil with its clients and spark the users’ interest in various facts about the brand.

Solution

It’s rarely interesting to learn dry facts even about your favorite brand – and especially when this happens out of context. Even the most loyal clients have little interest in the events that have no direct relation to them. This is why we decided to serve the facts about Citymobil in the context of the times when the events took place. We created a time-travelling taxi of sorts, and when the users rode this taxi, they traveled along the 13-year-long timeline of the company’s history – and that of the world in general.

We created a game with locations tied to the different years that were full of numerous references to the popular events of each specific year. In every year, the user not only learned a fact from the brand’s history but was submerged in the general nostalgia. Playing the game, one could reminiscence about 2007, create a fancy avatar or customize their ride like in the Need for Speed computer games.


By doing this, we submerged the users in the atmosphere that transformed the process of reading company-related facts into an interesting pastime. For example, one could learn that Citymobil had created its proprietary app nine years ago, when the rest of the Russian internet was still calling the taxi service operators to order a taxi.

Game characters

Among the taxi passengers were the company’s founders, pop culture figures and meme characters from different years. You could give a taxi lift to the Korean pop band BTS, or Hulk, or Mr. Heisenberg.

Illustrations

Each character could be found at their specific location dedicated to their year. The illustrations were full of references to the year’s events, pop culture phenomena or memes. In their conversation, the passenger and the taxi driver shared facts from Citymobil’s history, blending them with jokes about the current year.

Upgrading the ride

In addition to time travel, the users were offered two other options. In 2008, they could “pimp their ride,” like we loved to do in the computer games back in the days and continue their ride in a customized car.

Userpic design from 2007

In 2007, the users were offered a chance to recall their photoshopping skills to make their userpics “cool” or emo-style. The users were given additional game points for userpic design and ride customization.

Results

More than 36,000 people took part in the game, and 13,000 promo codes were given out as part of the campaign. The company’s founders had great things to say about the game.

36,000

Users

13,000

Promo codes

Advertising/Design
adidas Luzhniki Stadium