• 

According to a recent UN study, a staggering 63% of individuals do not feel safe walking alone in their area in the dark. Further insights show that most people instinctively avoid unlit streets and prefer not to wait for their ride in such areas. Because it stands for safer streets, inDrive, the international ride-hailing app, was determined to tackle this problem and launched its “Light The Night” initiative.

In a city-wide takeover, the global ridesharing service went on illuminating the streets of Cairo by transforming billboards into light boxes designed to maximize brightness, hence prioritizing safety over advertising. Since April 13, inDrive has flooded 28 carefully selected locations around the city, including the darkest streets, with reassuring bright lights through billboards in a minimalistic design. The billboards feature a URL directing people to the "night light" locations, and a glow-in-the-dark map of the city as its base, ensuring the city's residents easily find these well-lit spots.

inDrive also customized and installed light boxes utilizing special LED tubes that emit 50% more light than conventional billboards, in areas that require additional lighting and have no existing billboards. The project successfully transformed once-dark streets into warm, inviting spaces.

Radio hosts praised inDrive's initiative, raising awareness and informing listeners of the locations of the "Light The Night" billboards.

Conceptualized and executed by Havas Middle East, with billboard production by The Film House, the campaign aims to further reinforce inDrive's mission to contribute positively to the city's environment, ensuring that more individuals feel safe both inside and outside their homes, particularly during late Ramadan nights.

“‘Light The Night’ aims to make the streets of Cairo more welcoming and reassuring. Our minimal design ensures the billboards illuminate the darkest streets, turning what once was visual noise into a source of comfort for the residents,” explained Serena Abi Aad, Creative Director, Havas Creative Middle East. 

“Our strategy extended beyond media. We wanted to inspire a movement towards greater safety, so we handpicked outdoor locations in the darkest streets and built our own custom outdoor structures illuminating darker spots,” said Lama Al Khawaja, Business Unit Director, Havas Media Middle East.

“A city is inDrive’s natural habitat. Being an important part of the urban environment is valuable for us. We are seeking to make a positive impact on Cairo as this is the largest city in the region. We would like to incorporate our projects into real city life, to make them visible and useful for Cairo and other urban settlements,” noted Vlad Revenko, Global Head of Special Projects at inDrive.

The initiative is definitely laudable although not new. See here what Tide and its agency Leo Burnett Beirut have done in Beirut, Lebanon.