How did Uber become so popular? Let’s take a look at Uber’s marketing and branding strategy!

Uber is very popular in China.

On the one hand, it was investigated and fined by local officials in many places for illegal operation , and on the other hand, it was flooded in the circle of friends.

Especially before May Day, it was investigated and punished by the Guangzhou City. Soon afterwards, Uber launched the "One-click Call Hero" campaign in Shenzhen. In conjunction with the hit blockbuster "Avengers 2", it randomly arranged drivers dressed as heroes such as Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, etc. to pick up passengers.

Compared with similar taxi-hailing apps in China, what made Uber famous was not only its low price, but also its creative marketing: they launched the "boat ride" service in West Lake; in Houhai, you can call a rickshaw with one click; students looking for jobs can use Uber to "call executives with one click"; in Shanghai, you can even "take a flight" directly; during the Spring Festival, you can call for lion dance performances; if you are not careful, you can call Tong Dawei who drives a Tesla , or a fashion blogger who is famous for his spicy comments on Weibo to take you to a fashion show...

The reporter learned that one of its latest activities is even more eye-opening: in Tianjin, just take an Uber and the crosstalk master will be here immediately.

This ambitious and talented "player" has attracted the attention of competitors and industry insiders. Various analyses of the "Uber phenomenon" remain hot. Whether positive or negative, the attention itself has constructed the current "Uber phenomenon." How should we view its creative marketing "show"?

Creative Marketing Attack

Uber, the originator of taxi-hailing software and a star representative of the sharing economy, was founded in 2009. It has become popular all over the world with its wild growth and its unstoppable momentum. According to the New York Times, Uber may become the world's most valuable startup , and its next round of financing may bring its valuation to $50 billion. The essence of the sharing economy is flexible pricing, which means it is economical and affordable in the eyes of users. In more than a year since entering China, Uber has tried to pry open the market with an endless stream of cross-border marketing activities.

Before the emergence of Uber, taxi-hailing apps existed only as a tool with a single function. After the emergence of Uber, the services that taxi-hailing apps can provide have exceeded the boundaries of people's imagination, which is why Uber defines itself as a technology company.

Uber, with its American temperament, is gifted in storytelling. Its function is not only to take taxis, but also has many cross-border and diverse labels: fashion, social , warm, elegant, high-end, creative, etc. Compared with its domestic counterparts, what makes Uber famous is not its subsidies, but the various creative and imaginative marketing activities mentioned above.

"Given Uber's current market position, I think its marketing efforts are still relatively conservative," said Wang Gao, professor of marketing at China Europe International Business School, while most people are dazzled by Uber's marketing creativity.

Uber's employee system in China has always been praised by the media. Its staffing is extremely streamlined, but its operational efficiency is very high. The basic configuration of each city is an iron triangle team lineup: marketing manager, operations manager and city general manager. Where does the creativity of Uber's series of marketing activities in China come from? What kind of data analysis and intellectual support are behind them?

"It's actually not that complicated. It may only take a few weeks from the generation of an idea to its implementation," Joe, Uber's public relations manager in Shanghai, told reporters. "Uber has to develop quickly. We have a small number of employees, so we just do it when we think of it." In the reporter's WeChat Moments , you can occasionally see the creative ideas of Uber Shanghai General Manager Wang Xiaofeng. After 12 o'clock one evening, Wang Xiaofeng posted a message on Moments: How about calling a reporter with one click? Only for entrepreneurs with reporting needs, an Uber reporter will conduct a 20-minute quick question and answer session in the car. Are there any journalist friends interested?

This means that Uber's creativity came more from sudden inspiration than from any long-term planning.

Professor Wang Gao believes that the traditional step-by-step approach is too slow, and what Uber is most anxious to do now is to attract cars and customers and quickly expand its scale. Many business cases have proved the truth that the winner takes all. "Whoever controls the platform controls the world" has become an iron rule, so Uber's current development is focused on speed.

Lessons from Uber’s Marketing and Branding Strategy

Uber is unique in that there are multiple possibilities for the identity of the driver: the chance of meeting a celebrity driver is slim, but there is a chance of meeting a corporate executive who is picking up a passenger, a writer looking for inspiration, a wealthy person experiencing life, etc. Some typical stories have become Uber's marketing highlights: for example, there was a story circulating online about a female passenger who used Uber to call a senior executive of Greentown Real Estate. After they had a pleasant conversation, the girl directly purchased a Greentown property through internal discounts. Stories like these inspire people to look forward to “wonderful connections and encounters.”

In addition, Uber is more than just a means of transporting passengers. The vehicle only serves as a core carrier to support its expansion into different fields, and food delivery and express delivery are also included in its service scope. Creative marketing is ultimately based on business purposes. A closer look at how Uber became so popular reveals that it has taken a different approach:

First: Discover creativity by adapting to the times and the local conditions

Professor Wang Gao said that Chinese users are naturally different from Western users, and Uber has put a lot of effort into local thinking and logic. As an American visitor, Uber knows how to adapt to local customs, as can be seen from hailing a rickshaw by the Houhai Lake and a rowboat by the West Lake. Not only that, it is also Uber's instinct to seize every opportunity to unleash creativity, seizing the motherly love of sending babies to kindergarten on September 1, making use of Tong Dawei's residual warmth as a "warm man" after the hit movie, and performing retro lion dances to cater to fans of traditional folk art... The company is very familiar with the "right time, right place, and right people".

Second: Cross-border cooperation, topic marketing , and leveraging opportunities

According to media reports , Uber spends almost no money on hard advertising, but why is it frequently exposed and even on the headlines? Tong Dawei and Zhao Youting are both popular male stars with healthy and sunny images. The number of fans they have on Weibo combined is nearly 28 million. Fashion column blogger gogoboi also has more than 4 million fans who follow international fashion trends. The exposure and topic volume brought to Uber can be imagined. A large number of media also reported spontaneously. At the same time, Uber can also convert some of the fans of its partners into its own fans. In addition to celebrities, Uber has also reached cooperation with a number of high-end companies such as Tesla and Starwood, which is also to consolidate its own brand tone and form a virtuous cycle of leveraging. One media outlet wrote: A senior executive of Greenland Holdings lamented in his circle of friends: "Vanke signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Uber today. We are still too old and too slow." Judging from the reactions of companies rushing to "take advantage of the situation", Uber's halo is clearly evident.

Third: Tell wonderful stories, play the warmth card, and create social value

Among the many driver stories circulating on the Internet, one can often see interesting, heartwarming and positive routes. There is a middle-aged woman who becomes an Uber driver after a failed marriage and eases her emotional pain by expanding her social circle. There is a young engineer who is tired of the boring work in a state-owned enterprise and escapes from his shabby life and his parents' control by becoming an Uber driver. There is also a journalist driver who uses Uber to pick up and drop off passengers for free and writes a series of reports by getting information from chatting with the passengers. It is not known whether these human stories are true, but they have won the love of a considerable group of people and have the characteristics and value of dissemination. Through the subtle influence of the story, people gradually came to understand the extraordinary features of this taxi-hailing app, which also has offline social functions.

Fourth: Know how to play to your strengths and avoid your weaknesses, and use creativity to avoid the frontal battlefield

Like other taxi apps, Uber also provides subsidies to drivers and passengers, but this is not Uber’s biggest promotional highlight. Many people don’t even know how to get discount codes because the price of “People’s Uber ” is low enough during non-peak hours. Professor Wang Gao believes that Didi and Kuaidi’s subsidy method of directly sending red envelopes is also a marketing behavior, while Uber not only allows customers to enjoy subsidies, but also establishes a communication mechanism. Uber's subsidy method is more interesting. For example, you can win a discount code by uploading a photo on Weibo of "a passenger and a driver making a U-sign with their fingers". This approach strengthens the interaction among users, Uber, and drivers. Professor Wang Gao believes that Uber has no advantage over Didi Kuaidi, which is backed by Alibaba and Tencent, in terms of spending money to attract users through subsidies. Making creative marketing activities the highlight is also a clever way to cover up its shortcomings.

Fifth: Proficient in communication strategies and good at packaging business behaviors

Whether it is cooperating with Tong Dawei, Mark Chao or blogger gogoboi, Uber has tried its best to downplay the advertising effect. There are even rumors in the media that there was no advertising fee for the cooperation between Uber and Tong Dawei. From the perspective of audience psychology, everyone is willing to actively spread entertainment information but not forward commercial advertisements. Professor Wang Gao analyzed that: Advertising marketing ends when it reaches the audience, while viral marketing makes the audience become disseminators, and spreads from the main body to the periphery in a nuclear explosion-like manner. Uber cleverly packages its commercial advertisements into entertaining videos and photos, and makes them the trigger point, making the audience unknowingly become boosters of Uber's commercial marketing. Especially in Tong Dawei's marketing case, the video circulated on the Internet later fully recorded the process of Tong Dawei serving three passengers. It not only broadcast the passengers' special experience live, but also brought the audience the surprise of a wonderful micro-movie.

Sixth: Deliver brand ideas and clarify brand positioning

In the opinion of BrandZ brand expert Sun Ying, Uber’s three steps in building its brand are finding the target audience, understanding the target audience, and impressing the target audience. Mobile Internet users are mainly young people. Uber, with its Western style, attracts them with labels such as high-end, fashionable, and flexible, becoming the "Apple phone among taxi-hailing apps". At the same time, it retains users with diversified travel experiences and constantly updated marketing highlights, and cultivates the audience's preference and loyalty to the brand. In contrast, Didi Kuaidi does not have a clear brand positioning and has not expressed its brand story through marketing methods, which easily leads users to equate Didi Kuaidi with cheapness in their minds. Once it is no longer cheap, the audience will be disappointed and leave quickly. Although both of them are "circle users", the subsidy red envelopes from Didi and Kuaidi flying all over the circle of friends are real but boring, while Uber's high-frequency and non-repetitive creative marketing shows a "silent and subtle" effect.

The business reality behind marketing

"The normal taxi market is not highly profitable, and Uber's profitability is average. If it wants to make money, it has to rely on scale, so it has to expand rapidly. Uber was able to expand to more than 300 countries around the world in just a few years, probably because of pressure from the capital market," said Chen Xinlei, professor of marketing at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business.

Professor Wang Gao shares a similar view that Uber’s marketing efforts are not strong enough: For Uber, the most urgent thing is to build a large-scale two-sided platform and quickly mobilize vehicles and retain users by spending money. This is an era where even sentiments can be copied. The taxi-hailing software itself does not have too high a technical barrier, and homogeneous competition makes it difficult to leave behind competitors with absolute advantages. Wang Gao said: "Uber's marketing activities will not stop, and it will invest more resources to grab customers."

Surrounded by local competitors in China, it is not easy to break through: after the merger, Didi and Kuaidi became a "giant" in size, and quickly launched the "No. 1 Private Car" carpooling business, and successively launched new businesses such as school bus services, private jet services and exclusive private cars for women, and even announced that it will soon launch "Didi Express" to enter the logistics field.

Professor Chen Xinlei believes that Internet marketing can be very flashy, but it is difficult to "keep fresh". A business model that relies on novelty cannot be sustained for long. Modern people's needs for social interaction are also sought and satisfied through different ways. If Uber is used too frequently, users' sense of novelty will decrease, making it difficult to differentiate from competitors and having no moat to prevent plagiarism.

After all, the core business of taxi-hailing software is taxi-hailing, and the key points are still two: passengers can get cheaper taxis; drivers can earn more money. "No matter how well Uber's creative marketing works, it is still playing a money game , which is essentially no different from Didi Kuaidi, Yidao, etc." Chen Xinlei said, "Various stories related to drivers have indeed contributed to the rise of Uber's popularity at the marketing level, but the stories of drivers and passengers are uncontrollable and may become unstable and uncontrollable factors in the future.

In addition, Sun Ying said that it is not enough for the audience to remain at the cognitive stage of the brand, especially in the Internet era, where user stickiness is generally low, and it is necessary to stimulate the audience's interest and practice in participating in the experience steadily, accurately and quickly. Spending money on red envelopes can gain a large number of users in a short period of time, which can be considered a successful marketing method. However, the important question is whether you can continue to create a satisfactory experience for customers after gaining them to retain them. When it comes to brand clarity, Sun Ying asked the reporter: In China, how many users know that the correct pronunciation of Uber is "乌波" [u:br] instead of "优波"?

As of press time, Didi Express has already been launched, and its charging standards are directly aimed at Uber. Obviously, this is the latest strategy to target Uber, and a new round of business war is about to begin.

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