Ubiquitous Research Points To A Competitor’s Solution

This is not the first poorly thought out piece of PR we have received from Ubiquitous Taxi Advertising ^[1] – the last was a fine statement from their MD Andrew Barnett ^[2], we quote “If other businesses are planning to do well out of the Olympics, London’s taxi driver community is totally justified to do so as well – which when you are talking about greedy London cabbies fresh from attempting to raise fares during the Olympics probably pleased some in the Taxi business.

Many who use taxis would not have agreed when he added “This is fair compensation for the heavy traffic drivers will have to endure at the time of the games”.

Anyway as usual I digress. We’ve just seen the Ubiquitous Icons-on-Icons Report which polled 500 taxi passengers, held interviews with 15 media planners and hosted focus groups with 18 taxi drivers.

The results of the research offer telling insights into what the taxi industry should watch out for over the next 12 months BUT what the press release fails to say is that what it points to most is that they should go out and do deals with VeriFone Media VNET |Taxi ^[3]

The report stated that, we quote “tech-savvy Londoners want more in-cab technology, and what’s more, they want cabs to be branded more clearly to advertise what in-cab services that provide”.

The technology demanded by the passengers includes contactless/cashless payments (NFC), QR codes, wi-fi and phone charging facilities.

The research reveals that there is a tremendous opportunity in rolling out multi-channel campaigns – integrating online and offline marketing propositions, as more technology becomes available within taxis.

Mind you there’s a lot of interesting data in the report: –

• The average taxi journey is 17min – this time represents increased opportunities 1-on-1 time/brand exposure
• 60% of passengers use the time within black cabs to browse the internet
• 93% of passengers would use in-cab phone chargers if they were available
• 71% agree that QR codes are a good way to find out more about brands when on the go
• 70% of passengers say they were technology influencer within social circle (so targeting this group of people as early adopters of new marketing technologies is paramount)
• 66% revealed that they would use taxis more often if they knew in advance of a journey that they could pay electronically
• 86% of passengers said they would like the idea of being able to choose to pay by card or cash at the last minute
• 81% of respondents said they are prepared to pay more for premium brands

Whilst, signposting payment options on the side of taxis was also highlighted as important – something we errr suggested to Verifone that they do back in May 2011 ^[4] the report we think does more to promote what Verifone do now as opposed to what Ubiquitous says it currently offers.