This week, tech conference Collision has brought over 25,000 people in the startup and innovation space to Toronto. To make them feel a bit more at home, loyalty startup Drop has brought out a familiar transportation trend to help them get around the city.
Electric scooters became a major trend last year, especially in Silicon Valley, where they can be rented through a sharing service, similar to bike sharing. Bird, one of the early entrants to the space, is currently valued at over $2 billion USD and active in 100 cities, while competitor Spin was acquired by Ford late last year in a $100 million deal.
As part of its sponsorship of Collision, Drop has set up a pair of e-scooter stations at the Harbourfront Centre, where the conference is taking place, and Hotel X, giving attendees a way to get to and from their sessions while avoiding downtown Toronto traffic – as well as the time, cost and carbon emissions associated with being on the road.
Drop expects to provide 4,000 rides over the course of the conference, which it says is equivalent to getting 533 rideshare cars off the road, reduce potential carbon emissions by 2,647 kg and save attendees a total of $44,000 in travel and parking costs.
The activation is part of Drop’s brand mission of “leveling up” the lives of its members, which it has typically done by through its loyalty app by automatically rewarding them for purchases made from hundreds of partner brands. But Derrick Fung, CEO of Drop, says providing e-scooters is doing that as well by answering consumer demand for environmentally conscious transportation methods and avoiding traffic.
While the scooters feature Drop branding, the startup also partnered with Velocia on the activation. Velocia is another loyalty platform that gives users points in exchange for using apps related to travel and mobility, be it public transit, car sharing or, yes, electric scooter sharing.
The company is also doing outreach on social to the many celebrities attending and speaking at the conference, encouraging them to take a photo with one of the scooters in exchange for a $5,000 donation to the charity of their choice. For the rest of us, Drop is running a contest that will give away one of the e-scooters to someone who posts a picture with one of them before the end of the conference.
Drop is working with agency Eighty-Eight on PR.