Disruptive Brand Building – Simple and Effective
A recent newspaper article caught my eye with the headline; ‘Melbourne woman gives birth in the back of Uber car in New York’. From a brand perspective there’s plenty to find fascinating here; Would this article have been written if the birth had happened in the back seat of a regular cab? If it had been in a regular cab, would the brand of the cab company made the article, let alone the headline?

Uber is the largest taxi company in the world, yet doesn’t own a single car – showing how effective their disruption business strategy has been. But beyond the obvious sits a marketing approach that is also disrupting their category. As taxi companies around the world circle their wagons and engage PR companies to tell us all how unsafe and unsvoury Uber is, Uber goes about building their brand globally by telling us how wonderful they are. And they do this through firstly making sure they are providing customer experiences that are as wonderful as they possibly can be, secondly by doing wonderful things (think free delivery of adoptable kittens – C.U.T.E!), and thirdly by making sure the media (digital and traditional) know all about it.

Not only did Uber get onto this story of the miracle of life from NY, Josh Mohrer, General Manager of Uber New York, said the company would pay for the driver to get his car car valeted and the company also plan to send the baby an Uber onesie and to drive the family home from the hospital in a free Uber. A stroke of PR genius!

Dave Ansett
Truly Deeply Founder & Creator of Brands
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