Taxi industry was briefed on #YourTaxis campaign strategy at conference in September
The Victorian Taxi Industry appears to have been given a sneak peek of the #YourTaxis social media campaign that turned into one of the biggest public relations failures of the year at its conference in early September.
Hours after the Victoria Taxis Association announced it had fired the agency behind the #YourTaxis Twitterfail, Ellis Jones, the preview of the campaign given to the Victorian Taxi Industry Conference by Rhod Ellis-Jones appeared on social media.
Ellis Jones handled the development of the #YourTaxis campaign, but was dropped from the account after a Remembrance Day tweet offended social media users.
The presentation, titled “Communicating & Connecting, The 21st Century Taxicab Experience”, talked about connecting with empathy and relevance, stating “how I choose to travel reflects who I am”.
“Market forces change, emotional connection doesn’t”
This sums up why the taxi industry is where it is. Uber has changed the market. People hate taxis as much as ever.
I used to drive cabs to get myself through uni. I met lots of owners and operators, street smart people in their own way, some owning dozens of “plates”.
Unless they’ve all of a sudden gotten themselves MBAs and Ph.Ds in social psychology and marketing, this presentation would have been academic gobbledy gook to them, buzzwords aplenty. I can only hope the actual delivery was leagues above the slides that I saw.
Where is the product differentiation? Where is the value add? Where is the counterbalance to the public’s perception of taxis and their drivers being “something I have to put up with to get from A to B safely and on time?”
sneak peek…not ‘peak’.
Hi grammar,
Thanks for flagging, changed now.
Cheers,
Alex – editor, Mumbrella
It is all about service, convenience and experience for me. I actually use a local taxi driver most of the time (not uber). I just send him an sms and he or an acquaintance gets back within 5 mins and I get a nice clean cab, leather seats and a cheerful driver.
For airport / planned travel he is always my goto, he knows the route, he has never been late.
The reason I use this guy is that he hasn’t failed. If he does, it’ll be Uber. Smart taxi drivers can offer great service and build up their own customer bases?
I truly believe that really, really good, personal, quality service can compete with Uber. (Even if you start off and build your business, initially with Uber…) Perhaps treat uber as a website treats Google, however once you have your customer base, you might not need to rely on Uber so much.
https://t.co/BcOwrTAUHb
Hi there Les – here’s the link to the actual words to go with the presentation.
“Rhod Ellis-Jones delivered a session on a state-wide public relations and community engagement campaign, ‘Your Taxis’ to promote the role of taxis in the community. He asked participants for the stories, and VTA staff helped collect the large number of stories – next job is work out which ones are publishable!”
Well that sorta confirms what most of us already suspected — that the original goal was to curate positive taxi stories and not canvas negative feedback as it became.
Wow – reading the speech confirm that it was even worse than the slides suggested. If ever there was an idea without an insight, that was it.
So Rhod Ellis-Jones might have put the preview of the strategy up on Twitter after the fact, but that doesn’t get them off the hook. Just because they told the client what they were doing and the client okeyed it, doesn’t make this any less of a cluster fuck on their part. They were hired for their expertise in PR and social media, yet they didn’t supply any.
Just…keeps……..giving.
Loose lips sink ships not great promotion for future clients that you will be a trusted advisor.
Hi AMS. Just a quick fact check. Simon’s article refers (or should only refer) to the presentation by Rhod Ellis-Jones at the VTA’s state conference held 29-30 Sept 2015 in Bendigo. The link you provided in reply to Les is to an article written by Ellis-Jones “based on a speech given at the Australian Taxi Industry Association” conference on 20 April 2015 in Melbourne. The ‘Your Taxis’ campaign was not mentioned or discussed at the April conference by Ellis-Jones or anyone else – the focus of that conference was on national rather than state based strategies and initiatives. Ellis-Jones delivered a relatively general presentation on communications and PR at the April conference. Accordingly, the only PR campaign discussed at the national conference was the ATIA’s Grab-a-Cab! campaign (see http://grabacab.net.au).
Thanks AMS and Blair for your responses.
Perhaps we will one day see the actual words to the preso in Bendigo and then match it to the slides.
Until then, I’ll stay with my assertion of hope that the words and presenting “style” were leagues above the slides.
FWIW, my current presentation “hero” (it’s one way I get better) is NYU Stern Business Prof Scott Galloway. Take a look at this “strap-yourself-in” preso from earlier this year on branding:
comparing with Google, Amazon and Facebook (Four Horseman)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCvwCcEP74Q