HOW DOES A SOCIAL COMMUTING APP GO FROM BEING A
SMALL START-UP TO A GLOBAL GIANT, SOLD FOR MORE THAN $1B?
MAKE ‘EM FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR PRODUCT.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

I came on to lead marketing communications at Waze before the company’s US launch and was tasked with developing the brand, from scratch, alongside some very talented designers.

Given that we spent next to nothing on paid acquisition, the question that I often asked the team was: What will it take for people to really fall in love with—and enthusiastically share—something as utilitarian as a navigation app?

My take? A truly delightful brand that, if unavoidable, somehow made the experience of getting stuck in traffic a little less embittering.

Over the next 3 years, my amazing design collaborators and I worked together to build a truly beloved product, brand, and community—which, at last count, numbered over 140 million user, worldwide. I’ve been in taxis from Nairobi to Tokyo, São Paulo to Cairo, and it still gives me a thrill to see a little Wazer wazing around on the screen up in the front seat, getting me wherever it is I need to go.

WORK

• Developed product positioning, messaging framework, and tagline

• Created cute and clever brand and infused the tone across all consumer touch points - onboarding, UX writing, version release campaigns, video scripts, user-facing communications, business development materials, in-app error messages, etc.

• Directed the efforts of multiple international PR firms, across geographies

• Ideated various product features integrated into the app experience

• Conceptualized engaging digital campaigns + events
  
  

COMPANY TAGLINE

Waze started out as an open-source project of independent developers looking to augment traditional GPS with real-time traffic data. So, collaboration was built into the very DNA of Waze, the idea, long before it ever became Waze, the business.

The tagline speaks to the same sense of common purpose, by including the tool (the product’s technical smarts), the common enemy (traffic), and and the community (an actual sense of belonging gleaned from a navigation app? Sure, why not?).

MESSAGING & POSITIONING

It’s a fun story to tell, but she’s a long one. How about I tell you when we meet?

PRODUCT STRATEGY

BABY WAZER

Out of the many concepts I conceived of that made their way into the Waze product, my favorite was the idea of the 'baby wazer'.

The purpose of these babies was two-fold - 1) Having babies on the map, allowed us to gauge the ratio of new usership in a specific geography at a quick glance, and 2) It also gave users a progression system, anchoring them at a starting point and encouraging them to unlock additional features.

After a certain level of contribution to the community, baby wazers would mature into grown-up wazers, then be able to pick new moods for their avatars, or rise up the ranks into varying levels of 'road royalty'.

Funny enough, years later in San Francisco, I attended a Gamification master class that highlighted industry-wide best practices, and 'baby wazer' was called out as a stellar example of bringing game mechanics into a tech product. I didn't say anything in the back of the class at the time, but it sure did make me blush.

COMMUTE-O-METER

Tech moves fast. Today, a chart of estimated travel times to your destination projected hours into the future is table stakes for any kind of navigation app, but in its time, the Commute-o-Meter I helped ideate was something pretty novel.

I had to fight hard for the Commute-o-Meter name, but that’s what it was! An Android widget that users could install to see how traffic was looking across their commute window. Instead of telling users how long it would take to get home, it gauged the travel time to get home, and proactively prompted users when they ought to leave to avoid peak traffic periods.

VIDEO CLIPS

Scriptwriting and production in collaboration with Elad Tayar & Roey Regev

CAMPAIGNS

SUCCESSFULY ENGAGING A GLOBAL USERBASE

It’s a challenge to conceive of a promotion that’ll engage users across a diversity of regions, but riffing off of the popularity of the World Cup, my team created our very own FIFA-like competition, challenging users around the world to ‘munch’ (drive over) soccerball ‘road goodies’ (icons on the map, worth points) on behalf of their respective countries for the win.

The week-long tournament-style global competition was open to all, then narrowed idown to the top four countries who competed in a final showdown. The country with the most points would win prizes for their top contributors.

With 50+ countries participating, user engagement was off the charts, resulting in an extremely successful campaign that was replicated annually in the years that followed.
 

LEVERAGING PARTNERSHIPS TO CAMPAIGN FOR SOCIAL GOOD

I instituted a tradition that each Thanksgiving we’d run some kind of campaign to ‘gave back’ to the larger community. The first year, we partnered with Feeding America and Foursquare, inviting users navigate to local foodbanks that were temporarily visible on the map. After making a contribution, they could check-in via Foursquare to take their contribution to the next level; for each check-in, we donated $1 to Feeding America. A win/win for all parties involved.

GIVING PASSIONATE USERS A CHANCE TO FLEX THEIR CREATIVITY

In honor of Valentine’s Day, we challenged our loyal global fanbase to outdo one another by creating a video loveletter for Waze. Arrogant? Perhaps. But users loved the opportunity. Giving them plenty of lead time to create masterpieces, we were delighted to see how much time and care people put into their video loveletters. Peer voting determined the winner, who received a brand new MacBook Air. Take a look here, here, here and here to see some of the top submissions, they’re great!

 

RESULTS

After 3+ years on the Waze rocket ship, we had grown from a few thousand early adopters to a global userbase of well over 25 million passionate users, in 100+ countries. A number of months later, Google acquired the company for $1.1B.

Here’s what Yael Elish, Product & Marketing VP of Waze, had to say about working with me:

"As a key team member of a tiny product and marketing group, Alli had a central role in the creation of the Waze product and brand from the ground up. She was responsible for numerous parts of the brand and overall messaging, and was 'the voice' of Waze, and in that capacity wrote all collateral, clips, and communications. She had many creative ideas that have been implemented into the product, general marketing and social media and was also responsible for organizing community events and meet-ups as well as recruiting and interacting with our worldwide PR agencies, and did so in a very professional way. Alli is extremely creative, responsible and driven. It has been a pleasure to work with her over the past 3 years."