Uber SWOT Analysis and Creative Brief

Strengths

-Already widely well known

-Mostly good media representation

-Favorable view among core users

-Easy to use

-High standard of service, verified drivers and cars

-Hiring and maintaining employees is easy

-Operational cost is low -Very little competition

-Cashless payments are more simple and safer for drivers and passengers

-Dual rating system boosts trust and safety

-Drivers can also reject unwanted clients

Weaknesses

-Easily imitated

-Loyalty between Uber and its drivers is quite low

-Incentive to remain with Uber is low / Hard to create brand loyalty

-Very Unpredictable business model

-There are privacy concerns. Uber records where customer gets the taxi from. It also notes where he goes with it

-Drivers are not vetted as well as people may prefer

-Drivers may not be earning enough

Opportunities

-Customers are often dissatisfied with traditional cab companies because of high prices and long waiting times

-Huge opportunities in China / Hong Kong / India where traditional taxi services are expensive and inconvenient

-Suburban areas typically have low availability of taxis

-As more drivers are hired in an area pickup wait times will decrease, and satisfaction and likelihood to recommend will increase

-Electric cars could serve as great marketing campaigns and cheaper alternatives for drivers

- Some type of reward system for frequent users

Threats

-If drivers aren’t happy with the low-profit margins it might lead to bad publicity. This can in turn discourage the new drivers from joining Uber

-Some new legal regulations in countries like Germany will ban Uber from operating

-Problems with local authorities can lead to fines. It will also earn a bad PR

-As new markets and drivers are joining, fraud and scandals are also increasing. It is damaging for the brand

-Self-driving cars, e.g. Google Cars, could eliminate the need for Uber

-The taxi industry is fighting hard against Uber and its legality

Creative Brief

OBJECTIVE- Our objective for Uber advertising is to increase visibility of the service. We want to increase the amount of people using it and gain more frequency.

AUDIENCE- We want to focus our advertising towards people in big cities or college towns because we feel that is where most of our costumers are going to come from. Our target age would be people from 18 to about 55 years old in all social classes.

STRATEGY- Our strategy is to emphasize our message about being safe, convenient, nice, loyal, and low rates. We feel our message will catch people attention the most.

TACTICS- For Uber advertising, we know majority of our customers are people who have been drinking, so because of that, we don’t want our tone to be too formal. We want to stick to casual and convenient tone. We also feel casual tone is good because the company itself is not formal and we want to show what the company is all about.

COMPETITION- Our biggest competition is Taxi. We feel we can beat them out because we are a much safer option than them, with cheaper rates, and nicer vehicles. Uber is also much more convenient with the ability to pay through the app and request an uber through ones smartphone.

MESSAGE- Uber’s message is convenient, safe, cheap, and easy to use.

CHANNELS- Physical presence of an ad is usually better received than a mobile one, so we want to get the message out through advertisements in bars, airports, hotels. We also came up with an idea of GPS based advertisements. For example, if you’re at an airport, hotel, or bar facebook could pick that up from location services and advertise to the person be cause people in these places are more likely to use Uber.

EXTENSIONS- We would like to extend Uber with Spotify, allowing users to instantly connect with bluetooth while on their Uber ride. If we partnered with Spotify, we could remove ads while they are on the trip if they do not have premium. This gives Spotify more exposure as well. We also thought to team up with Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) to promote Uber as a safe way to get home.

LAUNCH- With the profits already made by Uber, they would easily be able to partner up with both of these organizations.