Hailo Ireland was soon to be 3 years old. They were facing strong competition in Dublin from Uber and Lynk, so we needed to defend their position as market leader by creating nationwide talk-ability around Hailo’s 3rd birthday (which had an ulterior motive of “we were here first”).
We thought the most impactful way we can dramatise Hailo’s 3rd birthday was to act like a 3 year old, and do whatever we wanted! A series of 3 year old party activities (not part of this entry) followed. But first we needed to promote the overall initiative. We came up with the 3 year old taxi driver.
We put a professional driver in costume, which looked like a driver’s seat so that our cab looked empty. We then placed a child safely and harnessed in the driver’s seat of the cab in a series of controlled environments and started playing tricks on Dubliners who thought that a 3 year old was driving the cab.
The stunt was filmed with a series of in-car and on-street hidden cameras and shared on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube with a total view count of over 900,000 views across the board and featured on Mashable UK, AdWeek, Creativity Online Editor’s Pick, Lürzer’s Archive, Bestadsontv.com and many other media sites.
