Uber’s attempt to reclaim popularity after price rises
In this posting from the LinkedIn Agency Influencer program, Mo Works’ Samantha Tran argues that the taxi-hailing app is too ingrained in our lives for us to give up on it.
If your name is Sam or some variation of Sam – like mine and many hundreds of thousands of Australians is – then you’ve already heard about Uber’s latest marketing tactic. Come to think of it, you probably have seen it floating around even if your name isn’t Sam.
It’s a damn smart campaign and one that has done particularly well with the support of social media.
Nice little puff-piece for Uber, but there’s something inherently out of whack with a company that surcharges its customers for its own shortcomings.
When they fail to provide enough drivers at peak times, they up the price exponentially – how dumb is that? Like most, I immediately get myself a taxi, and pay a normal price. Imagine if the grocer had only 2 apples left, so decided to charge you $10 each for them. Insanity.
With everybody in Uber being about 15 years old, perhaps they haven’t been to business school yet, but there’s no way anyone can spin the malpractice of charging extra for having failed to enable supply to meet demand.
“With everybody in Uber being about 15 years old, perhaps they haven’t been to business school yet”
– Believe you me, they have been to business school. Loads of ex Wall Street, who put dollars first, ahead of everything else and are used to making people pay. (Do not forget that they could do no wrong as bankers, with bail out after bail out.) Ethics school would be a nice place to send the SLT of UBER.
p.s. Your apple analogy looks good and makes sense, kinda. However picture a storm up in North NSW and the banana crop is half wiped out for the season. Bananas, as a result, become far more expensive. Supply and demand…
Voting with feet, like you do, is something Wasll Street bankers are not used to (bail outs), so if we keep doing that then we can try to keep them honest 😉
I remember how insane that banana pricing was!!
Yes, there is certainly a bit of that. But at the same time, when you’re hiking in Nepal and there are only a few shops around, the price for toilet paper is insane.
It’s supply and demand. They say surge pricing is to encourage more drivers to also get on the road, to encourage for that supply.
I’m really sorry but this steady stream of needing content is annoying everyone. All this article says is ‘Uber’s new campaign is good’. No insight or analysis.
I have no doubt that this will be a successful campaign, but as for their social strategy, I wonder how strong this would have been without the awareness generated by the above the line spend i.e. wraps and masthead takeovers of the Herald and Telegraph.
That’s absolutely part of the campaign though – something that the big names want to talk about because they know there are people out there who want to know more.
Then maybe you should have mentioned that in your piece. You know, some analysis beyond Uber’s marketers being “geniuses” (they’re not) and its drivers being “bona fide legends” (they’re not).
Uber fans. Turkeys voting for Christmas comes to mind.
But they’re a tech company so, like, really cool.