Lyft “Magic Modes” Platform
ROLE: Innovation LEad + GM
Early-on, I pitched the creative concept of allowing passengers to book rides in exciting vehicles as a marketing stunt to raise brand awareness, and preference, through earned media and social virality.
Fast forward, and we turned this successful one-off marketing-stunt into a powerful platform to launch Lyft’s marquee “Magic Modes,” garnering billions of earned media impressions and social engagements.
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Ultimately, Lyft’s media division started selling Magic Modes as an offering of their ad sales platform, generating revenue for the business.
As the platform lead, I oversaw the “magic modes” integration into the Lyft App, Executive Produced numerous campaigns, and created playbooks to rinse-and-repeat.
None of this amazing work was possible without Lyft’s army of talented creatives, comms-leads, brand-managers, partnership leads, engineers, etc. I was merely harnessing the team’s creativity.
RESPONSIBILITIES
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LYFT RIDER APP
Platform PRD
Platform design & development, allowing for activating “Magic Modes” in-app.
Creation of In-App Surfaces to marketing upcoming modes to rides.
LYFT INTERNAL-TOOLS
Mode-Specific Asset Upload allowing for Rider-App customization.
Mode Scheduling by Time, Date, Region, Sub-Region, etc.
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Concept Design
Experience Design
IP Partnerships/BD
Comms + Social Strategy
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Budget/ROI Approval
Budget Management
Schedule/Timeline
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Creative Development
Experiential Agency RFP & Management
Experiential Production & Installation
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Experiential Operations
In-App Campaign Setup
Comms Spokesperson
“TACO MODE”
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Garnering over 1B earned media impressions, Lyft partnered with Sony/Ghost Busters to launch Taco-Mode.
This activation was actual the pilot for what we intended to be a permanent integration between Taco Bell and Lyft.
In Los Angeles, Lyft-Riders would see “Taco Mode” in the Lyft App and could book a ride to Taco Bell for free tacos.
To increase press-pickup, we scheduled ride-alongs with reporters to experience the magic first-hand, where I was the Lyft rep.
To bring scale, digitally, we created a promo-code in the Lyft App allowing anyone who entered the code to turn their car-icons into Tacos and receive a discount at their local Taco Bell.
“Ghost Mode”
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In an activation that garnered over 1B earned media impressions, Lyft partnered with Sony/Ghost Busters to celebrate the release of the new Ghost-Busters Film.
In New-York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, Lyft-Riders would see “Ghost Mode” in the Lyft App and could book a ride in the famous Ecto-1 vehicle.
To bring scale of experience, in addition to offering the actual movie-car in LA, we up-fitted 5 cars per market to appear like Ecto-1’s. The cars were loaded with Key-Lime Slime Twinkies, Hi-C Ecto Coolers, and Ghostbusters exclusive merch.
To increase press-pickup, we scheduled ride-alongs with reporters to experience the magic first-hand, where I was the Lyft rep.
To bring further scale, digitally, we created a promo-code in the Lyft App allowing anyone who entered the code to turn their car-icons into the films famous green ghost, Slimer.
“Strange Mode”
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With “Strange Mode,” we took the in-car experience to the next level and fabricated a series of Haunted House vehicles equipped with automated bumper-seats, a hand that jump-scared out of the center console, lighting effects, etc…
Earned Media was the goal of this activation, so a large focus was placed on the content-capture video, and reporter ride-alongs. I flew to NYC for this and spent the day going from one consumer publication to the next sharing the experience.
“WEinermobile Mode”
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Weinermobile Mode was on the bucket list for years.
Oscar Meyer actually approached Lyft for the activation and covered most of the costs. This was an early instance of Lyft leveraging the platform we’d created to fund our activations.
Soon-after, Lyft added “Magic Modes” to Lyft Media, and we began selling this sort of activation to select sponsors.