Taxi advertising specialist Ubiquitous are encouraging Edinburgh locals and day trippers to visit the city’s iconic castle through a taxi advertising campaign during the run up to Christmas.

As part of Historic Scotland’s wider campaign to ‘make history more colourful’, taxi advertising specialist Ubiquitous has supplied 15 artistic cabs featuring a technicolour scene of armed knights in front of Edinburgh Castle. The eye-catching taxis have been designed to attract residents and regular visitors to the tourist attraction during autumn and winter, with the message ‘rediscover Edinburgh Castle now the summer troops have left’. To reinforce the message inside the taxis, the striking image is replicated on tip-seats and drivers will be handing out branded receipts, ensuring the lure of Edinburgh Castle remains with passengers long after they’ve reached their destination.

Commenting on the campaign, Lisa Robshaw, Marketing Manager at Historic Scotland said, “After the hustle and bustle of summer has died down, it is time for locals and day trippers to enjoy the cultural experience on offer at Edinburgh Castle – without the massive crowds. Taxis will give the campaign visibility throughout the entire city, ensuring that we reach a wide audience of residents, commuters and winter tourists. While the city’s Christmas themed activities will attract seasonal visitors, our taxi advertising campaign serves to remind everyone that Edinburgh Castle is open all year round.”

Micky Harris, Director at Ubiquitous added, “Edinburgh Castle may be Scotland’s leading tourist attraction but as with many cultural landmarks, locals often forget to visit the wonderful attractions on their doorstep. Using taxis as a vehicle means that the message will be broadcast far and wide. Historic Scotland’s refreshing sense of humour brings the taxis to life with a campaign that catches the eye and brings a smile to the face of Edinburgh locals.”

InterRent, the low-cost car rental brand, has hired taxi advertising specialists Ubiquitous to raise awareness of the latest UK offering from the Europcar group. The first-time campaign for InterRent marks the brand’s recent entrance into the UK market.

The campaign has been designed to reach frequent travellers to two of the UK’s busiest regional airports: Birmingham and Glasgow. The exteriors of 50 taxis have been creatively branded with the message ‘car hire from £10 per day’ to promote InterRent’s competitive prices. Inside, a tip-seat campaign will reinforce the message to remind passengers of the deals on offer at their local airport.

Ken McCall, Managing Director, Europcar UK Group said: “Having only recently arrived in the UK, we wanted to launch a campaign that would instantly set the InterRent brand apart from other car hire companies. From rates of £10 per day, we want to make it easier for travellers to get around once they’ve touched down at the airport. The taxis will broadcast our key offering across some of the busiest cities in Britain, emphasising just how affordable hiring a car can be.”

Micky Harris, Director at Ubiquitous, added: “The car hire industry is a particularly competitive space, especially at transport terminals. Where airports are often located on the outskirts of major cities, black taxis are a great vehicle for travel brands to reach a target audience of consumers as they travel to and from their flights. Since taxi drivers naturally make their way right across the city, often ranking in high footfall areas, they take a brand’s message far and wide to a broad audience of business travellers and holidaymakers.”

During Spring/Summer London Fashion Week 2013, Spanx utilised their sleek British taxi, to take key journalists to various fashion shows. Each journalist had unique access to their own branded taxi throughout the day, which was ready and waiting to be used as desired.

The aptly named ‘Spanx rescue rides’, were a huge success with journalists, prompting them to share their branded taxi experience on social networking sites. Having VIP fashion journalists turn up to a variety of shows in Spanx taxi style encouraged them to socially share their taxi experience online. This enabled Spanx to be associated with London Fashion Week.

“We loved it, and Darren was fantastic we have had so much brilliant feedback on how great he was so please do pass on a massive thank you to him on behalf of myself and our team.” Lauren Matthews, Account Executive; EdenCancan

For the February 2013 opening of the new Saracens Rugby Club Stadium, Allianz Park, Allianz created four bright blue liveried taxis, to feature in London for eight months. The campaign aimed to directly engage Saracens supporters and to create a stronger bond between them, their club and Allianz.

Safe in the knowledge that the iconic taxi would play a significant part in their overall sponsorship promotion, Allianz decided to further leverage their taxi investment and increase brand awareness by implementing additional PR Event activities using the iconic vehicles.

One tactic was to create a Facebook competition, which ran in May 2013. It ingeniously combined sport with social networking by featuring a film of three of the club’s players filling an Allianz taxi with junior rugby balls. This competition to guess how many balls were in the taxi, was circulated by fans on Facebook, with one lucky school or youth rugby club winning all the balls for the sports facility, alongside a pair of tickets to the Premiership Final at Twickenham.

By implementing the taxi-led competition via social networking, Allianz were able to boost awareness and ‘talkability’ about their association with the Rugby Club, as well as to help inspire a younger generation to get involved in the sport.

Illustrious lip care manufacturer Carmex, teamed up with Ubiquitous to feature on taxis for the first time, bringing 5 bright and distinctive Liveries to the Capital for a three month winter campaign.

As a celebration of their 75th Anniversary, Carmex incorporated a twitter competition into their fun and quirky creative, which could be easily spotted on the figure of the iconic black taxi. With the knowledge that social media plays a key role in how consumers find and share brands, passengers and the general public were invited to tweet pictures of the exclusive taxis, for a chance to win sort after Carmex goodies.

The competition not only encouraged an increase in activity on their Twitter page, it also gave the campaign an extra edge, allowing the product to be the solution people turned to during a key seasonal period.

Farrah Gray, UK Communications Manager Carmex “London continues to be one of the most popular destinations for Christmas shoppers across the world, so capturing the attention of these consumers is a key focus for us. Both black cabs and the Carmex® brand are worldwide icons and the combination of the two will help our brand to dominate the streets with an instantly recognisable burst of colour.”

In October 2012, Bank Workers Charity teamed up with Ubiquitous to produce 3 light and bright liveries for a one year campaign. The charity turned to taxi advertising in its quest to intensify donation and increase the interventions they are able to make within the financial sector.

To help maximise their campaigns impact, BWC utilised one of their taxis in the Lord Mayors Show parade. Keeping their float simple for optimum effect, 30 walkers followed the positively connoted branded taxi. By using the taxi to this end, the Charity were able to capture the attention of the right audiences and have their name circulated in association with the event, as it hit national press.

Some of our followers may be aware that at the start of March we put a campaign on the road for Microsoft that signified a new dawn in the evolution of taxi advertising. For the first time ever, there is now a fleet of London Hackney Carriage taxis featuring free Wi-Fi and NFC marketing. This new opportunity goes under the moniker ‘CabConnect’ and is the latest in a long line of innovations from the team here at Ubiquitous. (watch the video for a quick immersion: https://vimeo.com/64050045) Our launch advertiser, Microsoft, has sponsored 225 taxis for three months and will reap the brand benefits that come with being the provider of free Wi-Fi. In fact, this moment in the history of taxi advertising is, unusually, a win-win-win situation, in that we’ve created an offering that goes beyond an advertising opportunity; free Wi-Fi in taxis will change London for the better, enabling people on the move to stay reliably connected, providing cabbies with a beneficial service to offer passengers and giving brands a chance to interact with upmarket individuals in a manner that’s unobtrusive and opt-in. But we didn’t just arrive at this idea by chance; the dawn of Wi-Fi and NFC enabled taxis has been some 18 months in the pipeline and was driven by the desire to bring taxi advertising into a converged media world, in a manner that would be rewarding for brands and appealing to passengers, the latter being the most important for an opt-in proposition such as this. Only after thorough audience research did we pursue the CabConnect idea, having been reassured by the facts, (rather than our gut-feel), that this was the right thing to do in terms of passenger brand engagement. As important as free in-taxi Wi-Fi might be to London, let’s not forget that we’re in the advertising business and that this is a commercial proposition that aims to repay our capital expenditure and provide return on investment for brands. CabConnect is very much a screen media opportunity, but we’re in the 21st century now, so when we say ‘screen’ we mean ‘smart screen’; the phone in every pocket, the tablet in every tote. To ignore the power of the connection that we, the public, have with our smartphones and tablets, would be missing a trick. Our NPD research revealed that for 90% of people, their smartphone is their first port of call when looking something up, and that 88% quite simply wouldn’t leave home without their mobile. For brands, what better way could there be to engage consumers than via this very personal and vital lifestyle tool? It’s also important to remember that this isn’t a ‘space invasion’ opportunity for brands – this is all about the power of choice and placing that power in the hands of the taxi passenger, and indeed, placing their experience at the heart of your communication strategy. Invite them to interact, rather than push content upon them, and you will be handsomely rewarded. It’s a staggering fact that over 70% of taxi passengers agree that smartphone interaction is a suitable way to be served product information in a taxi, and that if you let them explore at will, they’ll be much, much more likely to remember your brand messages. ‘Choice’ lies at the root of this success story, as does ‘relevancy’; the phrase ‘build it and they will come’ has little place in today’s world where consumers rule the roost, because, quite frankly, ‘they’ may simply choose to go elsewhere. If a brand neglects to offer content that’s relevant, useful or appealing to consumers then the motivation to pay attention wanes and that all important brand union is jeopardised. Of course, all of this is highly subjective, as one man’s meat is another man’s poison; but by providing brands with the opportunity to create a bespoke Wi-Fi portal, our research told us that in one fell swoop, we’d be offering something that would appeal to the desirable taxi passenger audience. How a brand chooses to tailor their mobile engagement opportunity is of course, up to them; but as we all know, content is king, and once the trade has been made, taxi passengers are significantly more likely to pay attention to the brand, in return for the Wi-Fi. Despite all the research we’ve done, there’s nothing so rewarding as seeing the real-time usage levels first hand or reading the Twitter comments of those who’ve discovered, to their delight, that the taxi they’re in has free Wi-Fi! We’ve had some great stories too from our cabbies, who’ve commented that passengers have extended their journeys (all the way out to Heathrow in a number of cases), on learning that they can stay connected for free. Even though we’re less than one month into this ground-breaking Microsoft campaign, it’s already been such a success for all involved to have implemented a service that’s useful and valuable for London. CabConnect is transforming journeys in ways that are rewarding for all involved, just as we hoped it would.

French fashion label Maje has teamed up with Ubiquitous to brand over 100 London cabs to raise the company’s profile in line with London Fashion Week.

The creative will feature on 100 London taxis around the capital on a SuperSide format, as well as appearing on 28 Mercedes Benz Vito taxis. This is the first time that Vito taxis have featured in a mainstream taxi advertising campaign and is an indication of their increasing popularity as a taxi format, being able to carry larger numbers of passengers, often for longer journeys.

The campaign, featuring English television presenter and model Alexa Chung, has been designed to increase awareness and drive footfall to Maje’s eight London based points of sale.

In addition to the stylish exterior creative which reflects the brand’s chic Parisian origin, each taxi features interior tip seats, and branded receipts for passengers, this will further help to encourage fashion-forward consumers to visit Maje on the high street, especially those who may not be aware of the brand’s London stores.

Yves Benoliel, Marketing and Communications VP, Maje, commented, “London is one of the world’s leading cities when it comes to fashion so reaching out to the capital’s stylish audience was essential for us. Using taxis in our campaign enables us to reach consumers in areas which other formats would not be able to do as easily and the benefit of tip-seats and branded receipts provide us with an opportunity to tap into consumers throughout and after their journey.”

Andrew Barnett, Managing Director, Ubiquitous commented, “Timing advertising campaign to coincide with a major industry event such as London Fashion Week is an intelligent approach to maximising brand exposure. With media attention around the fashion industry at its height, the taxis will help position Maje as front of mind as one of most exciting labels in town during the show. This will prove an invaluable means of attracting consumer attention to both the brand’s online store and retail outlets.”

A major new exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland that displays a host of treasures from the home of the people we know as Vikings, is being promoted to the people of Edinburgh through a series of Viking branded taxis, brought to life by taxi advertising specialists Ubiquitous. The creative cabs are part of a multi-channel campaign that includes press, social media and outdoor to promote the exhibition. The National Museum of Scotland is the only UK venue for Vikings!, an outstanding exhibition of more than 500 objects, including jewelry, weapon fragments, carvings, precious metals and household items, from the world-renowned collections of the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm. The taxi campaign features an enlarged image of one of the artifacts from the exhibition, a silver pendant found in a Swedish Viking burial site, in the form of a man’s head. This striking image captures the eye and gives Edinburgh’s general public a taste of the fascinating objects that will be on display as part of this world class exhibition. Commenting on the campaign, Kerry Fraser, Marketing Officer at National Museums Scotland said, ‘The marketing and communications activity for the Vikings! exhibition is aimed at raising awareness and generating visits, whilst creating good visibility and a strong presence and share of voice. The exhibition aims to attract a broad audience of adults and families, from regular arts and culture attendees to new fans of the Vikings. Incorporating taxi advertising as part of the campaign enables us to ensure that our message is reinforced in areas where other media is running, as well as infiltrating those streets where our activity is otherwise light.” The full campaign includes print advertising in Scottish, national, popular and family titles, online advertising, social network activity and bus sides and taxis in Edinburgh. This busy schedule is complemented by leafleting and posters in key tourist locations. ‘It’s fantastic to see taxi advertising being used as part of a comprehensive integrated campaign’ commented Andrew Barnett, Managing Director of Ubiquitous, ‘Taxis are very effective as the “backbone” of a marketing strategy, making sure that all other media is continually reinforced through excellent city-wide coverage. In such a cultural city as Edinburgh, taxis will also deliver frequency of exposure of the ‘Vikings!’ message to a captive audience.’

Here at Ubiquitous we like to talk about icons; we truly believe that the black cab is an icon and we go so far as to say so in our strapline, iconsonicons. But what is it we mean by this? What is it that makes something iconic and therefore worthy of more note than something that is simply famous? Having settled on this topic for the blog, I found myself challenged to define what I believe makes an icon; I felt it was more important to try to decide this for myself first, rather than simply look it up or Google famous icons. My conclusion is that, these days, we bestow the moniker too freely and that to truly be an icon, or be iconic, requires that you stand for a well-defined set of values, and that this standing has endured over time. Perhaps, therefore, death is one of the greatest catalysts to becoming an icon. If you are dead, you are not very well able to ruin your own reputation, and if the values that you represented are those which everyday people aspire to, such as glamour, strength or humanitarianism, even the fact that you may have ended your days in a drug-fuelled stupor fails to tarnish your image and, indeed, may even enhance it. It’s much easier to maintain your iconic status if you are dead; the photos of your life, your films or your achievements endure because people aspire to the values they represent and, over time, these values are bestowed upon you, regardless of whether you actually held them dear or not. Therefore, I conclude that it is much harder to become an icon if you are alive and even harder to maintain that status. It is much more likely that you have simply featured in famous images of your time and that these are representative of an important moment and therefore will pass into the hall of fame as being iconic. You may have achieved iconic status through your single-minded ambition to be one, or you may have achieved it unintentionally through the accomplishment of your goals. Some people do not aspire to fame, but it’s impossible to avoid it if you achieve, innocently or not, the status of icon. This summer in London we witnessed many memorable moments in which people were transformed into famous household names: their images of triumph, pain, disappointment and compassion representing iconic moments of the Olympic Games. Over time, will those individuals become as iconic as the images in which they feature? I think not. They may change career or they may fall from grace and we might forget them; nevertheless, the values of those moments, captured for all time in an iconic image, will endure. I have concluded that there are two more types of icon, which rely more heavily on reputation than imagery; these are brands and, by extension, services. Now I will say that the ‘services’ part is a bit woolly, but you will see what I mean in a moment. I think everyone will agree that there are some brands that stand out from the crowd, and this is not necessarily because they are market leaders, but because they have stood true to their values and have transcended the status as simple service provider to take a stake in popular culture. Virgin’s popularity as a brand in the eighties far outstripped its market size and it achieved this simply by challenging everything that our well-established long-haul airline market was built on, publically upsetting the applecart in the process. It has stood by these values ever since and people continue to love the brand for flying in the face of the establishment. Over time, if an iconic brand has embedded itself in social culture, it needs nothing more than a visual trigger to bring a clear set of values to mind: the Nike swoosh, the Apple logo, the shape of the Fiat 500, the golden arches. When all that a brand requires to maintain its presence are visual triggers then it has triumphantly connected with culture, has delivered on its promises and has won hearts and minds. It has become an icon of the values that it stands for and is so powerful that other brands want to be associated with it, as do people. Which brings me neatly back to the black taxi and my ruminations about why this service, which has in itself become a brand, is considered to be an icon of Great Britain. My conclusion is that the black cab itself stands for a well-defined set of values that transcend the trusted and knowledgeable service provided and that these deep-felt values have endured over the years. Yes, cabs are expensive and, yes, the iconic shape has changed (and will continue to do so), but this global reputation as the best cab service in the world and the vehicle’s status as London’s most iconic form of transport demonstrate that the icon which is the black cab is greater than the sum of its parts and represents values that are attractive to advertisers, whether they’re already icons or not. Icon: ‘a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol, or as worthy of veneration’ (OED) WATCH OUR LATEST VIDEO: The Black cab, 2012 Global Icon.