Concur, the leader in employee spend management, recently launched a year-long multi-channel campaign targeting UK businesses named “Conscious Interaction.” The activity has been created and delivered by Maxus For Business, the specialist B2B division of Maxus UK.

The multi-pronged activity leverages the personal nature of event marketing across radio, digital/mobile display, digital audio, OOH and social. The campaign is highly targeted, executing around key business districts, environments and events. A vital part of the activity involves Concur’s fleet of branded London taxis offering free journeys between eight and nine AM, or to and from key events.

When no events are taking place, the taxis will start the free passenger hour from strategically important business locations such as Canary Wharf and Old Street.

On-board, Meshh technology is being used to deliver free WiFi, with a branded landing page within the taxis – a media first, not only for a B2B client.

Jenny Thornton, Director of Field Marketing at Concur, said: “Our target audience of SME decision-makers are incredibly busy and always on the go, thinking about how to save the business money and prepare for growth. This campaign shows how Concur makes life easier by removing process headaches for them as well as their business travellers.”

Commenting on the Concur campaign, Sarah Priseman, Director of Marketing & Planning at Ubiquitous said, ‘This is not the first time that we have showcased Concur on our taxis, so not only are we really pleased to have them back, we are delighted that the brand has embraced the hyper-local content opportunity. This campaign is a world-first – it’s the first deployment of Meshh technology in vehicles, and it’s also the first time a brand has used the full capabilities of technology to provide hyper-local video content combined with free Wi-Fi to taxi passengers.’

London – a city where traditional British pubs and world class cocktail bars can be found side by side and where the cosmopolitan audience have all night drinking on their doorstep. You would think that alcohol drinking trends in the capital would be on the up, but a recent survey has revealed that many young Londoners are in fact teetotal. The proportion of 16-24s who do not drink increased by more than 40% between 2005 and 2013 and today one in five is teetotal, having a greater personal focus on living a healthier lifestyle than those in the generations that have gone before them. The trend towards healthier drinking is not restricted to alcohol either; the audience in London is embracing the ‘sugar free’ age and bottled water sales are steadily climbing. The challenge of course, is creating brand marketing that stands out in the crowded London market. In terms of audience, taxi advertising delivers the opportunity to reach 60% of 18-24 ABC1 Londoners this summer. Just 250 SuperSide taxis for eight weeks will deliver an average of 12 brand impacts per young adult reached; this kind of frequency goes a long way to keeping a brand front-of-mind amongst an audience who are consuming waters and soft drinks regularly. The London adult ABC1 audience, who also see taxi advertising regularly, are almost twice as likely than the average person to drink premium waters, soft drinks and herbal drinks more than once a week. More than 50% claim to be drinking bottled water once a day or more – people who see taxi advertising are an ‘outdoor and active’ audience, and apparently they are a thirsty bunch too! One third of our taxi audience is reaching for the fruit and vegetable drinks once a week. In terms of traditional fizzy soft drinks, the London taxi advertising audience is almost 1.5 times more likely than the average to reach for diet/low calorie or sugar-free variants. More than half of Londoners who agree that they really do look after their health have seen taxi advertising in the last seven days. To cut-through to this audience, in a way that reaches new people daily, requires a hard-working and cost effective format that is relevant to audience lifestyle. Taxi advertising delivers millions of brand impacts amongst London’s urbanites every month, in key areas where they are earning and spending money – people who are, (importantly), making regular decisions about what to buy for themselves and the household. Brand awareness and familiarity drives sales; taxi advertising drives awareness. Why not talk to us about making your brand visible on London’s streets this summer. Sources: ONS, GB TGI, Route.

Taxi advertising is proving an increasingly popular way for property agents and developers to keep their brand awareness high and their message prominent amongst an urban audience of buyers and sellers. In fact, people who regularly see taxi advertising are 47% more likely than the average person to expect to buy or sell in the next 12 months; they’re also 80% more likely to expect to buy their first home this year. Despite recent dips at the top end of the market, London’s housing scene is robust, being the biggest in Europe and attracting £35bn in capital in the last quarter of 2015 alone. Excluding the top-end price drop (thanks to higher stamp duty), London prices actually rose by 11% year-on-year. According to the Land Registry the average London home now costs £476,000; this will likely only continue to rise with more than 54,000 new homes planned, or being built in prime areas, many of them priced at more than £1m. Prices might be high but there is still growth to be had, especially in some of the cheaper boroughs such as Newham, which saw a 23% growth in 2015. Being the front-of-mind property agent or developer in this climate is of huge importance; the market moves quickly so keeping potential buyers and sellers informed about your services and properties is key to success. We have seen a host of residential agencies use taxi advertising in the last 18 months, as well as developers looking to rapidly sell new builds in prime areas. As an advertising medium, taxis guarantee continuous growth in audience reach because they are always travelling down new streets, both residential and business. Over three months a campaign of 250 taxis will reach more than 3.5m greater London ABC1 adults; that’s 70% of the available audience. More than 30% of the audience are career-driven, upwardly mobile professionals; 20% are established families, perhaps commuting in to London to earn and spend money, and a further 20% are affluent achievers – high earning executives. This is a valuable audience with money to invest with or settle down with. Reaching London’s prosperous audience of house buyers, sellers and renters on the streets, via taxi advertising complements other media that might be running in targeted press or on radio; London’s ABC1 adults are hard-working and time-poor; they need to be reminded of your brand regularly, and taxi advertising will do just that, delivering on average 17 opportunities for the audience reached to see the campaign across the three months. Vitally, this audience is also mobile-enabled and are quick to respond to outdoor advertising seen by researching the brand on their mobile. Many have property apps and will be looking at them daily in their quest to either find or sell a property in this fast-moving market. Don’t miss out – be seen by this opportunity-rich audience both frequently and cost-efficiently via taxi advertising. Sources: Route; Land Registry; The Guardian, City AM – 2016.

Card and contactless payments arrive in Ubiquitous Black Cabs via PayPal’s NFC enabled card reader, PayPal Here From this month if you’re in London and hopping into a Black Cab, there is a growing likelihood that you will be able to pay for your ride with a debit or credit card or even with Apple Pay, using PayPal’s NFC enabled Chip and PIN card reader, called PayPal Here. PayPal, one of the world’s leading digital and mobile payment companies, is delighted that PayPal Here has been approved as a card payment solution by Transport for London (TfL). This was announced in November 2015, ahead of TfL’s announcement to mandate card payment facilities in all London taxis, from October 2016.

To kick-start card payments in Black Cabs, PayPal is running taxi advertising with Ubiquitous, the UK’s leading taxi advertising company. The taxi advertising activity is primarily aimed at London taxi drivers and alerts them to the availability of PayPal Here as a contactless and card payment solution for their taxi. As for all businesses using PayPal Here, the solution offers one of the lowest transaction fees in the market* – a key consideration for taxi drivers. Another key advantage of the reader is that payments made to the business via PayPal Here are deposited immediately into the business’s PayPal account, meaning there is no wait for the money to reach your account. As part of the advertising activity, inside the taxis passengers will see the tip-seat posters during their journey, which communicate the choice and availability of being able to pay for their taxi journey with a debit or credit card payment, including contactless payment, via PayPal Here. PayPal Here accepts MasterCard, Maestro, American Express and Visa cards and even Apple Pay.

Rob Harper, Director of Mobile Commerce, PayPal UK commented, “There are more than 22,500 Black Cabs in London, offering a first class service throughout the capital. However, more people expect to be able to pay by card when they grab a cab, and are frustrated to find that many taxis don’t take cards. We hope to remedy this by working with Ubiquitous to make PayPal Here the choice of both London’s cabbies and passengers in 2016, giving people the option to pay via debit or credit card and by contactless card and mobile payments.”

PayPal is globally recognised and trusted by consumers as an easy and secure way to pay for goods and services, so why not use its card reader in Black Cab rides too? Commenting on this, Andrew Barnett, Managing Director of Ubiquitous said, “In 2016 we will see London’s Black Cabs catch up with the rest of the world by offering card and contactless payment as standard. We are delighted to be working with PayPal to offer what we strongly feel is the best card payment solution for drivers and passengers; one which will help London’s iconic Black Taxis to better compete in a market that is increasingly driven by technology, which now includes the option of faster, easier payment via contactless.”

Proxama the leading mobile proximity marketing experts and Ubiquitous, leader in UK taxi advertising, have announced an exclusive, long-term partnership to create a network of beacons in the UK's black taxis, enabling messages to be delivered direct to an engaged audience experiencing times of dwell.  

The network will connect consumers to brands via their smartphones using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Beacons. The partnership will plan to install up to 4,000 beacons into taxis in London and across other major cities including Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham, meaning that passengers can receive context-relevant messaging, as they travel to their destinations. During the course of one year, each London taxi is estimated to make around 4,500 journeys, principally around central London locations, rail stations and London’s airports – similar journeys are experienced in other UK key cities.

London’s regular taxi users tend to have high personal income, are smartphone and tablet enabled and are likely to be middle-management and above – in short, a very desirable group and one which brands very much seek to reach. This new beacon network represents an opportunity not only for Ubiquitous’ clients to send contextually relevant messages to passengers’ smartphones, but will be relevant to all app-based clients seeking a beacon network that engages with high value consumers, across a long dwell time. Based on data from our existing beacon networks, Proxama anticipate that 24% of consumers that receive ‘in-the-moment’ content-relevant notifications will click-through to the app. This is a significantly higher response than other forms of mobile advertising.

Andrew Barnett, Managing Director, Ubiquitous comments: “Being the first company to put beacons into black cabs at scale is consistent with our innovative track record and I am delighted to be working with Proxama who are quickly establishing themselves as pioneers in this market. For all brands, the opportunity to connect with their customers through proximity marketing, in a high dwell-time setting such as the back of the cab, provides a unique one-to-one moment in which there is the time to respond to messages and offers.”

Jon Worley, CEO of Proxama marketing division comments, “This is an excellent high profile partnership for us and one which we believe is extremely well suited to proximity marketing. The average cab journey lasts around 20 minutes in London and is a natural time for people to engage with their smartphone for messages and new content. We look forward to seeing the customer reaction.   Our network of beacons has grown rapidly across London since the beginning of the year. Advertisers are now able to make use of the Proxama Network which covers London buses, airports and black cabs, with further expansion planned across multiple sectors.”

On January 19, 2015, otherwise known as ‘Blue Monday’, the UK’s largest gym chain Fitness First, joined forces with the UK’s best loved Olympian and fitness enthusiast, Victoria Pendleton and Team GB gymnast Max Whitlock to turn Blue Monday, Red.  

Helping Brits to beat the post-Christmas blues, holiday debt and lack of sunshine with endorphin boosting one to one fitness activities, Fitness First opened gym doors across the UK for free visits, welcoming members of the public to experience ‘Fitness Reconfigured’, a campaign providing new insights into fun and dynamic workouts with a difference. Fitness First found that 41% of UK adults agreed that January was the most depressing month of the year with 82% wanting to improve their general wellbeing as part of their new year’s resolution.

To help raise the profile of Red Monday, Fitness First created an exclusive fleet of red taxis, and furthermore, to help those Londoners who required a little more encouragement to get to the gym, Fitness First provided VIP taxi rides. On entering the taxis, passengers were met by famous Olympians, Victoria Pendleton and Max Whitlock, who were on the back seat to share fitness tips and motivational advice to help spur the passenger on.

Max Whitlock said “When I ask my friends, they say that getting to the gym can be the hardest part of any workout, especially during the winter. I love the idea of Fitness First cabs which make the journey easier for a lucky few.”

To book a Fitness First taxi, people simply needed to Tweet #RedMondayFF to @FitnessFirstUK, for a lift to one of three central London clubs. The same hashtag was used throughout the day to share motivational hints and tips.

Commenting on  the taxi activity, David Jones, UK Marketing Director of Fitness First said, “It’s been a delight working with the Ubiquitous team and their drivers who have gone out of their way to deliver an excellent concept that has gone down a storm with members and non-members alike.’

Movember, the month formally known as November, is all about bringing back the moustache, having fun and doing it for a serious cause: men's health - specifically prostate cancer, testicular cancer and mental health.

This Movember, Ubiquitous is helping to promote awareness of men’s health by backing the London Cab Driver Challenge, complete with a promo Livery taxi and its Ubiq ‘Mo Bro’ driver, Ian Buckler, who’ll be growing his mo for Movember! The London Cab Driver Challenge calls on London’s black cabbies to get behind the moustache and help start conversations around men’s health.

So guys, this month, don’t be surprised if your cabbie is a Mo Bro or Mo Sista who kick starts a chat about Movember and looking after your health as well as your moustache! Oh and don’t forget to look out for Ian in his Movember taxi – tweet a picture of his cab or his mo to #Movember.

Not a cabbie? No problem! Here at Ubiquitous we have a few of our own Mo Bros and Sistas taking part in Movember and we’ve set up a Team Ubiquitous page so you can watch our progress and make a donation! Set up your own individual or team page here.

There are now official Movember campaigns in 21 countries and to date over 4 million participants have signed up to Movember.com, raising £345m globally; the Movember foundation has now funded over 800 programmes around the world.

Christmas is approaching, so I am going to get my shameless festive analogy in early this year. No apologies either as the topic of this log fits perfectly! In some homes at Christmas you may find a bowl of nuts on the coffee table; a nice mix of almonds, walnuts, brazil nuts and hazelnuts, ready and waiting to be shelled using nut crackers that look entirely like they’ll trap your fingers in the process. By the time New Year comes around all that’s left is a small selection of nuts, the edges of which are gnarled and chipped because everyone in the household has tried, and failed, to shell them. Some nuts just seem impossible to crack; but I bet that next year you’ll try again anyway. It’s these hard to crack nuts that I want to chew over today. You see the nuts that we continually chip away at here are Ubiquitous are sectors and they’re specifically called alcohol and film. It’s an on-going puzzlement to us why, no matter how hard we try or how compelling the reasoning, encouraging alcohol and film clients to book taxi advertising continually proves to be a tough nut to crack. I should state now that this isn’t a ‘poor us’ blog, as we love a challenge and it’s likely that every media owner has a handful of sectors that are hard to break. But we are rather puzzled about why, rare exceptions aside, alcohol and film brands don’t buy in to taxi advertising – to us it seems like taxis would be a great fit. Let’s do a quick assessment of some simple campaign KPIs that these clients might be looking to achieve and compare them to what taxis deliver: 1. Reach an urban, socially active audience – tick 2. Deliver a premium, upmarket brand placement – tick 3. Great cover and frequency – tick 4. National and key city coverage - tick 5. Guarantee brand presence in high footfall locations – tick 6. Provision for PR activity even? Tick! 7. Proprietary research and TGI to support audience relevancy? Tickety tick. Of course there will be other out of home media formats that tick those boxes, but not necessarily all of them. Buses and roadside 6 sheets for example regularly feature movie ads; in fact I see films so often on buses that one ad starts to look like the next. Putting my opinion aside, entertainment is a top performing sector for Outdoor, but can it really be said that the stronghold that some formats have is because they genuinely deliver all of those features and benefits listed above? No. Likewise, alcohol brands are regularly seen on a wide range of formats across the underground, but once again, do these opportunities offer greater relevancy than taxis? I don’t believe so, but maybe I am biased. I’m sure that our fellow OOH media owners have similar frustrations, but when I think about some of the mainstream formats there are a few good reasons why certain brands don’t use them. For example, if you were managing a finance brand that wished to reach investor types, how high would bus supersides be on your list? Planning is a process that requires smart, informed thinking but I bet there’s also an element of personal experience and perception of certain media formats too. We have some clients that favour taxis simply because, first and foremost, taxis feel right for the brand. Planning expertise and facts aside, it’s not hard to do a personal assessment of media formats and arrive at a group of brands or sectors that would be relevant, simply based on personal experience and feel. I frequently do this for many formats (after all, most OOH formats compete with taxis) just to simply assess whether taxis are more or less likely to be a consideration for a campaign. We are honestly at a loss, despite regularly changing our angle of approach and attack in the search for success. So here we sit at Ubiquitous, staring down at our small bowl of battle weary nuts, hungry for a nibble and wondering what trick we are missing to crack them. Our own assessments tells us that there are very compelling arguments for film and alcohol – but now that I’ve got you thinking about it too, maybe your opinion is quite different? Perhaps you are reading this and seeing clear reasons why taxis aren’t on the plan for film and alcohol, as I do for other formats and sectors. Perhaps this is nothing more complicated than the fact that our perception of how relevant our media is for alcohol and film clients is way off base. We don’t know what the reasons are, but we think that we are right to keep on trying to crack these tough nuts and when we do, the fruit will taste all the sweeter for the effort. In the meantime, pass the Terry’s Chocolate Orange…

Pandora returned to taxis this autumn with these stunning Liveries.

To promote the new Pandora Store opening on Oxford Street, ten taxis were branded for the event. On the evening of the store launch, eight of the taxis were booked to pick up VIP guests and take them to the exclusive Opening Party.

Celebrities such as Kelly Brook and Girls Aloud star Kimberly Walsh were amongst those in attendance. 5 of the beautiful taxis were also booked in the run up to the event to take Pandora staff to and from the new store in preparation for the party!

On Thursday 10th October, Carven hired 5 of their branded taxis in Manchester for a PR stunt to celebrate the launch of the luxury brand’s new fragrance. Hand-picked ambassador drivers were booked to pick up models and staff from the Premier Inn in Manchester Piccadilly and drop them off in Manchester City Centre for the event.

The drivers showcased their attractive taxis within the city centre whilst the models performed a catwalk through the shopping centre, carrying Carven bags containing the fragrance. Once the stunt was complete, the drivers dropped the models and PR staff back at the Premier Inn!