I picked a woman up tonight who uses both Taxis and the Yank disruptors (Uber). She prefers us though. She works in PR and specifically lobbying. We had a long conversation about the "uber/TFL thing" and I gave her all the facts, ie the legal reasons they should never have been granted an operators license in London by TFL, the tax credit drivers, the non tax paying company, the inadequate driver insurance provision, the 650 licenses issued per week by TFL, the increasing rash of car crashes involving their drivers etc etc etc, the list went on.
By the end of my monologue she took a deep intake of breath and said 'Wow'.
Her answer to my points was as follows. "Why haven't I heard this before? Why isn't this in the national press? It's a compelling and well argued viewpoint. I think you've been badly let down by your trade organisations to be honest" (her words not mine).
She said you don't need demos and blockades that piss your potential customers off (and give free advertising to 'the opposition') , you need better/proper PR and lobbying (she wasn't touting for business may I add). I tend to agree on that to some extent. But I also rather suspect it's too late for that now anyway (however, more on that later). Anyway, whether you agree with her or not, PR is her business and she's good at it, plus she's a member of the travelling public, so shouldn't we take notice?
The problem is as it always has been, that, no disrespect, the London taxi trade is run/represented by cab drivers (or former cab drivers). As noble as many of these people are I'm not sure they possess the commercial savvy and dynamism that you need to formulate effective strategies in today's cut throat commercial world. And why should they? I know I don't. But the difference is I recognise it. Our trade orgs need to do the same otherwise they'll continue to fight losing battles.
I'm probably going to upset some people when I say this but I was somewhat disappointed by the recent 'PR offensive' that saw a fair amount of money spent by well meaning people on adverts that say "always use a taxi" (I'm paraphrasing but that's effectively all it says). What's the first thing a non taxi using consumer seeing this ad is going to say?
"Why?"
Yet there is nothing extolling our virtues, no bullet list of benefits in using a London Taxi over the opposition. I appreciate space is limited but surely if you're handing thousands of £s to an ad agency this should be a minimum requirement? Particularly when we can't compete with the opposition on price, it's more important than ever in that instance to give people a reason to use us when marketing our product. Isn't it? I'm no ad exec but I would have thought so.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the effort people have been going to here and it's not like I've done anything to push the cab trade myself, but this is just another example of us getting it wrong in my book. We lack the business savvy needed to take on the competition and no amount of blockades and "Londons finest" proclamations will change that in my opinion. It hasn't previously, let's face it, look where we're at now.
If the cab trade wants to get serious about taking on the opposition, for me, it has to do two things. Firstly it's trade organisations have to bat their heads together and unify as one single London Taxi Association, no more fragmentation. I appreciate this wouldn't be straight forward but it needs to happen in my opinion. This will give us way more clout and credibility. It will also provide a much bigger single pool of finance with which to address point 2. Point 2 being that we have to fight fire with fire, painful as it may be we have to sink some serious cash into targeted lobbying and marketing. Clever marketing. It needs to be coherent and most importantly it needs to be prolonged. Too many of our ad campaigns have been "come and go" affairs, too easily forgotten. In addition some have been frankly embarrassingly ill conceived.
I know it involves spending a lot of money but that is what is needed if we want to get our message to the public. Because they ain't getting it believe me. I have so many conversations with people who simply don't know the facts about our offering and our issues with TFL/uber and when they do they are enlightened. It ain't rocket science.
Anyway, that's that off my chest, I'm sorry if I've put any noses out of joint, it's only my opinion, it doesn't mean I'm right.
It was an enlightening conversation with that punter, opened my eyes to a few things. I took her business card if anyone is interested...
