You would think it’s a ridesharing crime until you know it’s posted officially by Dubai’s ridesharing app, Careem.
It started with a footage circulating online that influencer @MoVlogs on Instagram posted, showing a masked person wearing black caught on CCTV camera picking up a large statue from outside a villa one night, then loading it into the boot of a Careem XL-branded car.
“Careem over my house with a CCTV prank,” stated @MoVlogs, on the video.
Careem XL is the car-based delivery service offering, intended for home appliances, computer screens, and marketplace purchases that wouldn’t normally fit inside a standard courier box.
The masked person then drove away.
The video has already gotten almost a million views, plus it is picked up and posted by other popular accounts, such as Lovin Dubai, adding in to its views.
“CCTV footage showing something being taken from a home in Dubai is doing the rounds online. An influencer first shared the video and it has since been circulated by residents,” Lovin Dubai wrote about the video.
So, was the video fan-made? Was it AI? Was it comically created?
Careem itself enlightened viewers, saying, “Nothing funny going on here, folks! Just Box XL at work, now moving bigger things from A to B.”
So, it was Careem’s doing, after all. Nice!
Digging deeper, this was Careem’s way to get noticed. Tom Sword, senior brand director at Careem, stated, “The purpose of the campaign was to drive awareness for Careem Box XL, our new service for transporting larger items, by prioritising creativity over budget. With minimal spend, we used visual storytelling and social virality to capture attention across Dubai. By making the product the focal point of a viral video, we clearly highlighted Box XL’s increased capacity in a way that was shareable and memorable.”
However, Sword pointed out that the way the footage was circulating, as posted by random social networking accounts, is what gave it the wrong context. Think of official gone unofficial.
Sword explained how the controversy happened: “The footage was first published by Movlogs on Instagram without context, prompting confusion and speculation. Many viewers in the comments spotted our brand new vehicle, helping organically tie the moment to the Careem brand – exactly as intended. The video was later reposted by multiple influencers, including one on LinkedIn, amplifying reach across different audience segments. A few days later, we published a reveal video clarifying that the video was a stunt to highlight Box XL’s carrying capacity.”
But here’s the main point of the campaign. It was targeted to new Careem users who were not aware that Careem could handle larger deliveries, as well as existing box users who needed more capacity, hence the Careem XL vehicle.
Then again, there’s the second layer of Careem conniving with those influencers to add more publicity. That’s the side from Ridesharing Forum. People could go creative as much as they would like.
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