When Jon Berkowitz and Elan Band started their business in 2019, they never imagined that they’d achieve success in such a short time.
MotionAds is a company founded by the young duo who work with branding and advertising on delivery motorbikes.
When they started the business in 2019, they landed their first campaign with four motorbikes. Today, they currently work with an average of 500 drivers per month.
In the short time, they’ve signed campaigns with Vodacom, Pick n Pay, Hollard and Nedbank, to name a few.
Just recently, they announced that they would be working with Uber Eats South Africa and plan to see it scale to more than 1000 drivers in the months to come.
Band, 29, said working with Uber Eats would unlock huge growth potential for their business and drivers.
“This will enable us to seamlessly increase our capacity to run more campaigns with more delivery drivers,” he said.
The idea for the company hit them when the were stuck in traffic in 2018, and they considered the idea of “moveable billboards”.
In 2019, the pair thought they could first try it out with cars.
“Branding cars were too expensive, so we began researching bikes as an option. We pitched the idea to a pizza company, and the next day, they agreed to four branded bikes,” Band said.
“That was the day MotionAds was born. The pizza company and others kept renewing as they saw a return on investment, and this proved that the concept worked,” he added.
Berkowitz and Band built an app that tracks motorbike advertising. Through the use of the app, they’re able to present measurable campaigns to brands.
Delivery drivers are financially rewarded for better driving behaviour and earn an extra income for having their delivery box branded. Since 2019, their company has paid out over R3 million to drivers,
Berkowitz, 28, said their innovation lies in technology, not just two guys selling advertising on motorbikes.
“We have built unique, tech-enabled systems and apps to deploy branded delivery bikes to targeted suburbs,” he said.
He added: “They also track how far drivers travel and how many hours they spend on the road. This is summarised in a digital dashboard for clients, giving them real data and tangible results for their spend.”