In Vietnam, a country of petrol bike drivers, people don’t believe their country is ready for electric vehicles. One main perception is the lack of charging stations. E-bike brand, Dat Bike, decided to change the public’s mind, by claiming every electricity outlet in the country as a Dat Bike fast charging station.
The idea came from Happiness Saigon.
A Dat Bike can be fast charged in any electrical outlet, which means every outlet in the country is essentially a fast charging station. Happiness Saigon and Dat Bike created custom billboards to highlight regular outlets across Vietnam as Dat Bike fast charging stations.
The billboards turned office buildings, shopping malls, cafés… all into Dat Bike’s own personal charging network. For residential households only, that makes up over 2,5 million* fast-charging outlets for the e-bike brand in Ho Chi Minh City alone.
“Instead of racing to invest time, energy and technology into expensive fast charging stations, we put our effort into creating a superior product that can charge quickly from any household power outlet,” explained Andrzej Bialasewicz, Marketing Director at Dat Bike.
“By turning outlets into a new medium, we hope that every time you see one, you think, charging station. We aspire to turn a simple household object into a piece of branding,” added Jazz Tonna, creative director at Happiness Saigon.
After Happiness Saigon launched the custom billboards, even small businesses joined in by opening up their outlets as Dat Bike fast charging stations.
Then the agency set off a guerrilla campaign with branded stickers to claim every outlet that was left.
Thanks to the custom billboards, the small business plaques and guerrilla stickers, there is Dat Bike fast charging coverage right across Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s biggest city. Besides the orange signs popping up everywhere, the campaign sparked 2,100+ online discussions and 27,000 online engagement. The hack of regular household outlets sparked a national debate of skeptics’ perception of electric vehicles. And with a few well-placed signs, the small e-bike brand got free advertising space in the background of Vietnamese’s daily lives. Now, Dat Bike owns a branded fast charging network that even far outweighs the number of gas stations.
*Based on the 2019 Population and Housing Census by the General Statistics Office of Vietnam, TP. Hồ Chí Minh has 2.558.914 residential households. Counting at least 1 outlet per residential household, this results in 2.558.914 possible fast charging stations.