The city of Manila — filled with swarms of workers, entrepreneurs, and students trying to move from one place to the next, but constantly faced with debilitating traffic. In a city like this, how does a brand then communicate with the people?
adobo magazine was given a chance to discuss this rising issue with Waze, the world’s largest community-based traffic and navigation app. Sitting down with Emma Weisberg, Global Marketing Director of Waze Ads, she shared with us how the app offers unique tools and features for advertisers to connect with their audience, wherever they are and wherever they’re planning to go to.
Campaigns on Waze
Billboard after billboard, commuters and drivers in the Philippines are no strangers to seeing advertisements pasted everywhere they look. For decades, this, along with radio advertising, has been some of the most effective ways advertisers can connect with their audience while they’re stuck in transit.
While this method of promoting brands have proven to be effective, there is a need to tap into new marketing tricks especially with the amount of content audiences are faced with on a day-to-day basis. Brands are challenged to innovate and share their messages in unique ways to stand out and ultimately, to be heard and seen by their intended audience.
With this, Waze has introduced itself as a marketing platform for brands to tap into their markets non-obtrusively through an array of app-exclusive features like branded pins, zero-speed takeovers, arrows, and promoted search, among several more features.
Localizing Philippine Advertising on the Road
One of the biggest hits Waze Ads have had in the Philippines is its voice prompts that now includes the option of Tagalog / Filipino. Emma revealed that this is the most used voice in the country, and this is not hard to believe — just hop on a Grab or a Waze-powered cab and you automatically hear an invisible Filipino-speaking GPS.
Although there are no plans of using other Filipino dialects just yet, Emma shared that this is something that they can look into, acknowledging the number of different languages in the country like Cebuano, Ilocano, to name a few: “We consider ourselves hyper-local. A lot of that does come from the community. Our local community members help us to get the right language, the right translations and wherever we can be more hyper local and really speak to the person on the ground we always try to do that.”
On to the Next Ride
Emma shared with us that Waze is currently working on a measurement system for advertisers to accurately calculate how their ad on the app translates to actual store walk-ins, and ultimately, to profit. As the app is known to have one of the most accurate Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) among digital GPS, another project the team has been working on is collaborating with restaurants for drive-by orders. By letting restaurants know what a rider’s ETA is, the app helps ensure that food never sits on the window and gets cold.
There is a whole lot more to do on the Waze app than mere navigation as it houses a community of passionate drivers and commuters wanting to go somewhere but are forced to sit through hours of idleness while in transit — the perfect time to entertain, inspire and get them moving (hopefully towards your brand).
Full interview below:
