How DiDi’s Controversial Flute Ad Defied Internal Hate and Boosted Market Share by 33%

DiDi has grown its AUNZ market share by 33% in 18 months with a tiny budget and a behemoth competitor, thanks to a three-minute, fever dream of an ad—that some internal stakeholders, including its top marketer, partially “hate.”

“The internal stakeholders, a lot of them hate it, they really don't like it,” head of brand marketing Tim Farmer told a room of marketers in Auckland yesterday, at the Marketing Association’s #OnSocial conference.

“This is quite rare in companies, but our business understood the ad wasn't for them. And they understood the position we were in: Zero brand equity when we started.”

After his keynote, he told LBB he too felt uncomfortable with parts of the three-minute film, which launched last July, starring a mischief-making, flute-playing character called Nudgy.

“There's things in the ad that I don't like,” he said. Around two thirds of the way through the full-length film, the hairy-chested, orange-clad Nudgy is playing his flute in a pub when a pregnant woman “does a kick, has a baby.”

“I hate it, right?” Tim continued. “And my point of view was: Why? The ad's risky enough. Is that going to be too provocative? I still don't like it, but we shot it, and we said, 'Let's see it in the final edit. Let it happen. And then scale it back in the edit if you feel really uncomfortable.”

The moment “kind of broke the flow and draws you back in”, so it stayed. And because the work launched 18 months into his tenure—he joined in 2024 after close to a decade at Disney—he had earned his leadership team’s trust, and trusted creative agency Sunday Gravy. “I think this is where a lot of marketers can learn. Give your agency agency. ”

It worked—driving a 100% increase in top-of-mind awareness (from 6% to 12%); a 28% increase in rides; 41% increase in regular usage; 83% increase in preference; and 32% increase in new riders. The creative garnered 16.8 million social views, leading to a 196% surge in social engagement, and 158,000 Spotify streams of the earworm flute track.

That track, and the work, was purposefully divisive. But Tim would “rather be remembered than forgotten, and if that means some people don't like that, I think that's okay.” The David to Uber’s Goliath, Tim needed to build the brand, not the category. So DiDi AUNZ left celebrities, polish, and the ‘ride home’ to Uber, and chose to own “weirdness” and the night out. If “we're in the 400-metre race, we've started running backwards,” Tim said.

“One of the ideas was 'Let's Uber a Didi', which, for obvious reasons, the legal team shut down, but it's a great creative territory, right? People say, 'The other rideshare brand'. I'm like, ‘There's one, it's Uber, we can say the name, it's not Voldemort, you know?' They're doing great things, they grow the category.”

It didn’t take long to land on silliness as the vehicle through which to express DiDi’s anti-establishment personality. “We're in a category which has become quite sanitised and very safe,” Tim said. “I really felt we needed to own the social occasion, And social occasions are weird, wacky, wonderful.”

“We did look at naughty brands like alcohol [and] gambling. All the vices. And we looked into how they do it because they want to capture this sense of fun. And ultimately, booking an Uber or a Didi—no one's excited about that, they're excited about where they're going.”

Armed with a marketing team of four, a very small budget (the brand invested in cut-through creative over the media buy), and a challenge to raise local brand awareness for the Chinese-owned company, Tim started small, experimenting on social with “silly, low-cost things” to test “how we could be more mischievous with our tone of voice.” In 2024, it converted a Camry into a chariot, and launched a tow service.

Baking ‘weirdness’ into the brand incrementally bought Tim time to gain internal buy-in. He showed stakeholders local ALDI work challenging Woolworths and Coles’ duopoly; took inspiration from strange yet fame-building ideas like Carlton Draught’s ‘Big Ad’; and held tight to the knowledge the direction, bizarre as it was, would work strategically.

“It was the only option we had if we weren't going to be the back-up to Uber.

“Comfort isn't effectiveness and consensus isn't effectiveness. You're there to grow the business ... The biggest risk at the moment is not taking a risk.”

Many Australian marketing teams have faced recent redundancy rounds, so Tim observed, “To be successful and be noticed, sometimes you have to put your neck on the line, right? Sometimes you have to say, ‘Well, this is why I'm here, and this is what I'm bringing, and I think this will work.’”

‘Yes, I DiDi’ was the fifth most recalled ad in Australia in Q1 (up from sixth in Q4 2025), according to Cubery—44% of people hated it, 56% loved it, and almost nobody was neutral. The brand partnered with the AFL, and the Australian Open over January, so concentrated its limited media spend in Melbourne and Perth. “The fact that we're five on that Cubery list with no spend, we haven't promoted it in Sydney, Brisbane, or Adelaide.

“I genuinely was never worried that it wouldn't work from start to finish, right? Because I knew it was a good idea, I knew it was grounded in a credible position. I didn't think it would work as well as it has, to be honest with you, I thought it would take longer. And I would like to spend more behind it.”

The brand filmed a year’s worth of social content in a single shoot last year, ran a one-shot summer sequel, and launched a social dating series called ‘Love at First Ride’, which achieved a 68% view through rate for one 3-minute episode, and clocked up 4.5 million views in a month. The brand’s Instagram page now has a 27.7% view through rate, up from 8.6%. Then there’s DiDi’s Kick Ons: a series of raves in tiny, strange spaces like a launderette, car wash, or mechanic – ensuring partygoers have somewhere to DiDi.

“I don't genuinely see myself competing with Uber,” he said of the marketing push. “We don't focus a lot on what they do because we're trying to be distinct from them.

“There's far bigger things to compete with—like everything else on that scroll—than Uber. You're not competing with ads anymore.

“If you create a brand world, you have options. If you create a 30-second ad, you're in trouble.”