Surprise! Taxis.
These Pepsi Max taxis surprise and delight.
The team at Ubiquitous were chuffed when research from Clear Channel and System 1 came across our desk. The insight? Surprises make memories stick!
As the UK’s leading Taxi Advertiser, perhaps it’s not a shock that we loved the research. After all, advertising on a taxi is a somewhat surprising way to get your brand out there!
We thought the connections to Taxi Advertising were too good to pass up. Here’s why Ubiquitous agrees, and of course, believes it creates a ‘bonus’ for campaigns! But first, an explanation of the research:
Surprise is an emotion intensifier.
Sadly, the modern world tiptoes between overstimulation (thanks to the usual culprits) and the mundane. Anything that can “pull us out of autopilot and make us pay attention”, as senior researcher Tania Lunia states, is a powerful thing. Surprise intensifies these emotions because it snaps us out of our routines.
Surprise builds mental availability.
Mental availability is the ease with which a brand comes to mind at a buying moment, and neuroscience reveals that surprise plays a key role in enhancing it. Here’s what happens when we encounter the unexpected:
· Attention: Our brains are hardwired to notice the unusual or novel, which draws our focus.
· Emotional response: The amygdala (an almond-shaped mass of grey matter in the brain) triggers excitement and fear, helping us decide whether we should be thrilled or threatened.
· Processing: The prefrontal cortex steps in to assess, helping us make sense of the surprise and figure out how to respond.
· Reward & pleasure: If the surprise is a good one, we get a dopamine boost. The brain’s reward chemical. This reinforces the positive feeling and is an emotion intensifier.
· Storing the memory: The brain compares the surprise to past experiences and stores it as a new memory, helping the brand come to mind in the future.
Surprise drives social currency and industry exposure.
When something sparks a strong emotional reaction, people want to share it. Audiences are more likely to share a special build when it is more creative or surprising.
The taxi connection.
It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for this whole article. So, what is the connection to taxi advertising? If we look at the above points, it’s clear that taxi advertising offers a connecting thread:
Taxis as an emotional intensifier. As Clear Channel and System 1’s research proves, anything quirky (like the unconventional shape of a London taxi) will be committed to memory because it captures the attention of our overstimulated brain. Further, we know from internal research that audiences are already more likely to attach their own emotions and thoughts to a London taxi. It’s not hard to imagine that audiences would transcribe these feelings to a brand they’ve seen on the side of a taxi.
Taxis build mental availability. Route data tells us that taxis take thousands of trips past landmarks, historical places, and high streets – where purchases are made. It helps to use a format that makes the trips that count to the locations that matter.
And finally. Taxis drive social currency. Attest research for a high street brand found that audiences that visited central London only twice a week were already more likely to take a picture of the taxis they’d seen. It’s a ringing endorsement for the ‘surprise’ and, of course, the ‘delight’ that taxis bring to a campaign.
Taxi Advertising, like many other forms of OOH, has a habit of pushing boundaries. Ubiquitous is proud to be a Taxi Advertiser. And naturally, we’re always excited when we’re able to work together with other formats to deliver an eye-catching campaign that delivers real results.
For us, the ultimate surprise is that a format with 70+ years under its belt still finds a way to find new fans across the globe!
Sources
(1) https://www.clearchannel.co.uk/latest/powerful-posters-the-element-of-surprise
(2) Internal research for Ubiquitous
(3) Route Data, 2023
(4) Attest research for Kate Spade, 2023