Can Taxis Be Saved?
The editor of Mumbrella, Vivienne Kelly recently posted a story about an experience she had with one of the many cab drivers of our fair nation.
While not fully detailed, it was clearly shocking, horrific and another blight on an industry occupied by players almost seemingly determined to implode themselves.
Thankfully, she’s ok and even maintained the capacity to think of a connection between her experience and the implications for marketing, branding and communication challenges for the taxi industry, and write about it.
For me, her story highlights in dramatic effect, bedrock brand issues that every marketer should recognise, pay attention to and act on.
As concepts, they’re easy to understand, yet examples abound where brands falter on a failure to properly implement systems to manage them, and they are:
Brand experience matters more than brand promises
The player who moves first will only win if they stick solid and play a long game in being the difference they promise to be.
All players can be elevated or sunk by the actions of a single player (especially when perceptions are already teetering)
Before moving on, please go ahead and read Vivienne’s op ed for context. I also want to sincerely thank Viv for her consent to reference her article.
BRAND EXPERIENCE MATTERS MORE THAN PROMISES
Stay with me on this though think about Doctor Frankenstein and his monster.
If advertising is the electricity that gives life and a brand is the heart, then brand experience can be thought of as the chemistry that keeps it alive and beating.
All are important and can’t exist without the other, though once a lightning bolt has started the heart beating, then it’s the activities directly involved in sustaining life that matter more.
Reliance for survival shifts.
At it’s simplest, a brand is a construct of both the promise made (advertising) and the promise kept (brand experience), as it exists in a customer’s heart and mind.
That is, as a marketer you can fire in as much electricity as you want to kick-start life (targeted, bright, beautiful, creative, entertaining, full of energy and promise), but if there isn’t enough energy to keep those promises and sustain rhythm on its own, then the heart will stutter, fail and the entity will remain lifeless.
I love advertising and any beautiful, creative inputs (Promotion in the 4Ps) that come together to craft an initial brand story and have it presented to the world.
When all’s said and done though, where brand building is concerned, those activities serve a singular purpose: to tell a story that attempts to create (or change) and position a perception of truth in the heart and mind of the invited.
To make a promise.
A brand only truly comes alive and grows into its intended form when promises made are fulfilled via experiences had with said brand. That is, it’s only when the invited can match what they saw, heard and were led to perceive, with what it is they experience, can a brand exist.
An advertising strategy is a critical step in repositioning the brand and for the taxi industry, or a single player in it, is long overdue. It helps to chart the course required to turn negative perceptions around.
It starts the heart.
However, while players in the taxi industry can lay claim to almost complete vertical integration, a sought after marketing and business advantage, with a relatively undifferentiated base product and for all intents and purposes, a regulated price structure, it’s distribution (Place in the 4Ps) where things heat up and become critical.
That’s because, while there are other moments of truth in the vertical, promises of the brand are mainly kept (or not) via branded retail stores, which is what the car, the driver and our interactions with both represent.
The energy that sustains and strengthens life in the brand is mostly circulated by and rhythm sustained from that key aspect. It’s where all of the promises and other touch point experiences converge.
For that reason, a failure there resonates through the entire system; any marketing effort is wasted when it’s continually directed at making the promise and worse, remaking the promise, begging forgiveness and another chance, when they aren’t kept. That can amplify the issue in the wrong direction, which makes revival even harder.
Why? Because if those responsible for delivering the brand promise fail (either by failure of the brand to implement a whole of brand approach, mechanisms of compliance, or a failure of operators to follow the rules) then it will amount to nothing.
It’s akin to throwing fresh grass seed on concrete, expecting it to grow and when it doesn’t, throwing more seed down.
PLAYING THE LONG GAME: THE FIRST MOVER’S CHALLENGE
13cabs is the retail face of Cabcharge, a global taxi company and is marketing their brand, somewhat heavily right now, to distance it from other taxi brand competitors as well as (presumably) to take on the disruptor that is Uber.
They stand fairly unique. They’re the only taxi brand that seems to have a thought out plan to compete. At the very least, they’re waving the signal flag harder.
When the communication campaign kicked off in June, it promoted a fairly significant rebrand that included the cars, driver uniforms and training, booking app, other owned channels, and customer care. They appear to be raising key points of difference and paying attention to keeping promises, not just making them.
Whether they’re successful or not will depend entirely on how they manage their whole of brand approach beyond advertising and any first mover advantage they gain.
It’ll require commitment to the strategy, investment to ensure it’s delivered, diligent monitoring into what and where things can be improved, and leveraged to their advantage for the full pay off.
Things like collecting and properly harnessing data through their owned channels (app, web, social, the cars and drivers, etc), a customer contact plan that keeps them top of the evoked set and having a PR plan that converts negativity to fuel (including that created by other brands), responding to it as a podium from which they keep attention trained on their brand as the leader of change.
What’s very critical though is anything that keeps track of a consistent delivery of a street experience, which matches expectations the brand position raises.
It isn’t overemphasising to say it can all succeed or fail on that one thing.
Which brings me to the final point and that’s a key challenge they’ll need to harness, which derives from their first mover status and hopefully, provide incentive to the whole industry.
ELEVATED OR SUNK
A whole industry can be elevated or sunk by the actions of a single player, especially when perceptions are already teetering on a knife’s edge, there's little differentiation and the main competitor – in this case Uber – is so well scaled on an asset they don’t own.
As the first mover, 13cabs has the opportunity to create an advantage and be the leading force for regrowing industry perception and competitive strength. It’s a noble quest, since if the industry doesn’t survive then – all things being equal – neither do they. However there’s a risk.
If a brand largely indiscernible from others by the fact that customer choice is simply the “best of a bad bunch” (such is the apparent state of the taxi industry), then the possibility is high for all brands to be tarred with the same brush and a customer to not even recall the brand that they got the bad experience from.
In that context, when one behaves badly, then it may not matter if the others are better. What little margin for error exists is depleted and all are coloured the same (you’ll have read that Viv alluded to this in writing about her experience).
The risk is that based on actions of other brand players and because the industry as a whole is so poorly perceived, what ever swing to the positive 13cabs make could be brought back – and harder – by other brands’ behaviour.
So where 13cabs is concerned it can (and should) strive to elevate the whole industry, which in the long run is good for them, while at the same time maintain their distinct points of difference; the choice between them and all others.
This is where commitment to their strategy is essential, to ensure they’re not dragged down in the whirlpool created by their sinking competitors (should those competitors fail to see the complete risk and continue with their bad behaviour).
Stay the course and in the news, work at brand activations and any opportunities to positively connect the brand with communities, and be very public about it when they are. Proactively respond to industry negatives, as part of a solid PR and customer contact plan (a point I made under the previous heading).
The health and wealth of their own brand is, of course their main priority. With that being said, the opportunity to also be a lead advocate for the industry is beckoning.
It’s a potential vortex that can lift other players (who want to be lifted, for which the incentives are clear) into the positive light they create and is a far better outcome than being sucked down the aforementioned whirlpool along with everyone else. At the very least, they’ll have a stronger grip on the surface to prevent it, if it happens.
It’s no easy task. There’s a lot of work to do; a long game and every single brand, operator and system (human and tech) has a vital role to play, and it starts with knowing how these 3 core marketing concepts can influence business outcomes.
We’ll have to wait and see if 13cabs are able position themselves best to win in the brand and marketing stakes, reverse away from the edge of the perceptual cliff, arrest the decline in company value and lift the industry.