Creating Curiosity on the Road: How HURU Used MotionAds to Build Awareness That People Talked About

HURU is a South African digital verification platform focused on making background screening faster, smarter, and more accessible for both businesses and individuals. Through its easy-to-use technology, HURU provides criminal record checks, credit checks, identity verification, and broader vetting solutions designed to help companies make informed hiring and onboarding decisions with confidence.

Traditional static OOH was never the right fit for HURU’s objectives. The brand needed a medium capable of creating dynamic, repeated visibility while reaching different audiences throughout the day.

“Static media has never been of big interest to us because it is quite limited in its capacity.” David explains that traditional billboards often struggle to capture meaningful attention in highly cluttered advertising environments: “You’ve got those three to five seconds when somebody’s flying down the highway to get that message across.”

MotionAds solved this challenge by offering a more fluid, attention-grabbing form of OOH. Unlike static placements fixed to a single route or audience, the bikes continuously moved through multiple areas, exposing the brand to different demographics and communities throughout the day.

“Because they are mobile… your exposure is a lot more dynamic.”

The campaign’s distinctive bike designs and branding also played directly into HURU’s strategy of creating intrigue rather than relying on hard-sell messaging.

MotionAds delivered a highly collaborative, awareness-led moving media campaign that aligned closely with HURU’s long-term brand-building strategy. Rather than simply deploying branded bikes, MotionAds worked closely with the HURU team to deeply understand the business, its positioning, and the role the campaign needed to play within the wider marketing ecosystem.

The campaign leveraged MotionAds’ dynamic bike network to create high-frequency exposure across targeted urban areas, ensuring HURU remained visible in everyday environments where consumers naturally spend their time.

For HURU, MotionAds’ business model itself was also a major differentiator. The partnership-driven approach toward drivers aligned strongly with the brand’s own values around ethical business and meaningful community impact. David explained, “you are giving back and indirectly, so are we… we’re not just exploiting these drivers who are part of your network.”

Operationally, MotionAds also provided strong reporting, driver oversight, and brand protection measures - all key considerations for a growing brand investing in OOH.

“The fact that you guys put quite a large emphasis on the data…" says David, "...and are offering tangible reporting and insights back to us is hugely important.”

The campaign successfully achieved HURU’s core objective of building awareness, curiosity, and conversation around the brand. While exact attribution in OOH can be complex, HURU noted clear positive movement in areas where MotionAds bikes were deployed.

“Transaction volume within the immediate areas that the drivers were operating did go up," recalls David, "and in some cases, quite dramatically.”

Beyond transactional uplift, the campaign generated strong organic visibility and real-world engagement. “The amount of pictures and messages I’ve received from the general public, friends and family about seeing the bikes on the road has been effective.” Says David.

Most importantly, the campaign delivered against the brand’s strategic objective of becoming more recognisable and memorable within the market. “For the objectives I set out for this, it’s achieved those.” The success of the campaign has also opened the door for continued partnership discussions and future expansion opportunities between HURU and MotionAds - reinforcing the value of dynamic, conversation-led OOH in building modern brands.

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