Waze Traffic Jam

The summer of 2021 saw the largest ever migration of drivers on UK roads. A Covid foreign travel ban meant that 60% of the entire UK took a road trip to one of only four holiday destinations: The Lake District, Cornwall, Devon or Norfolk.

Yet when it came to the journey, most drivers were massively apathetic to the idea of switching from the sat nav already built into their phone, like Google or Apple Maps…

To show that Waze could keep you out of a jam, with a community of over three million drivers reporting road issues in real-time, we launched a real ‘Traffic Jam’, made from roadside berries, plucked from Britain’s jammiest roads; the A30, A11 & M6.

The jam allowed Waze to talk about the UK’s biggest pain point over the summer in a way that gave the brand disproportionate PR. Traffic Jam PR packs got into the hands of MistaJam on Radio 1, Boy George and Sam Thompson from Made in Chelsea. We even partnered with Uber Eats to include Traffic Jam in food orders during the campaign and made limited edition Traffic Jam Doughnuts with Krispy Kreme, served across service stations.

With over 3 million UK drivers reporting road issues in real-time, the only jam Wazers found themselves getting stuck into was the type you can spread on toast.

Photography by Ilka & Franz