UBER BRAND BEATS THE

GENERIC TAXI

©2015 Jose Roberto Martins https://br.linkedin.com/in/jrmartinsglobalbrands

It does not take too much effort to accept that the first taxis were, in

fact, horse carriages which responded for an “industry” chain which

involved drivers and many other professionals such as farriers, vets,

stable boys, blacksmiths, manure collectors among others.

Back to 21st century I 've been using taxi services here and there long

before the innovative Uber service. In Manhattan I use to feel l ike those

promotional inflatable air dancer fan tubes, shaking my hand in the air

praying to be seen by taxi drivers and, moreover, to meet English-

speaking ones whose cabs are clean.

Since many l icensed taxi companies choose to lease vehicles to

independent contractors for the day or the week taxi drivers usually runs

against the clock to pay their f lat fees. Sometimes it looks that al l other

civi l ian cars and people in the streets are their nemesis.

So why not make their l ives more stressful by stopping at crosswalks or

close intersections a behavior repeated to exhaustion in NY, Miami and

even in Tokyo, where many are non-English-speaking drivers which

iconic white gloves combined with l inings in seats are purely cosmetic as

they also encroach into areas where pedestrians are.

In Paris, the good surprise to interact with educated taxi drivers who

even got out helping with the bags, gentleness common in Lisbon and

Santiago. Beware of taxis in Buenos Aires where I was lucky to be just

scammed one or two times with the “no change” excuse.

In Rio, Salvador and São Paulo, where I l ive, we can find a plethora of

bad examples which I presume summarizes taxi services in many other

cit ies all over the world. Here many cabs also spikes dramatically during

rush hour or in rainy days, do not stop when they are empty mostly

because they are at lunch, or attending fixed customers elsewhere.

Many cars are not clean, smell the cigarette and, at best, drivers ask if

we want them to turn on the air conditioning, so in summer. Not to

mention the fear of taking a cloned taxi and being assaulted.

Many are usually conducted by untrained drivers, who do not know the

city or pretend not to by driving us for unwanted city tours while l istening

to their favorite radio station. If eventually connected, we hopefully can

count on Google Maps or Waze to monitor such evil behavior. But at the

end most of them don’t care about our wellbeing anyway.

I believe that the main issue on poor taxi services is i ts aged business

model where most of drivers are not the legal trained owners of their

taxis. At least they could keep their entire fare, minus expenses.

But this is rare in big cit ies l ike Sao Paulo, NY, Hong Kong, Paris or LA

where most untrained drivers leases their vehicles by paying a daily rate

out of their incoming fares plus the cost of gas. From experience we

learned that where businesses are in the care of i ts owners we can find

a higher level of commitment to consumer ’s contentment.

Taxi owners have a plenty of benefits in Brazil. To offer a medium to low

quality important public service they can buy new cars with 30%

discount, receive financing incentives and the exemption of the annual

l icensing tax which is due by every auto owner in Brazil. They can even

have exclusive free parking in public spaces for customer`s waiting

among other benefits which cost them irrelevant taxes.

On the other hand such generous system is not focused on monitoring

and punishing basic issues such as i l legal cars, not l icensed drivers

including potential ones with extensive criminal records, pending transit

f ines and so on. I pay taxes for rendering my consulting services but I`m

not sure that all taxi drivers are paying theirs!

A taxi l icense (“medall ion”) is a legal business elsewhere but in Brazil

self-employed drivers cannot legally negotiate their l icenses. But is well

known that such unlawful deals occurs all around.

I ’m sure I didn`t approach the exceptions all over the world where taxi

drivers are rendering a valuable and significant service but, on average,

I couldn`t meet them in enough data as to cause me a better impression.

I believe that Uber helped to improve taxi services and was not created

to replace them. Most of professionals crit icizes such innovative service

but I see it as inevitable so its better to deal with all the challenges

involved such as positioning, communication, branding, marketing

strategy and so on.

After al l Uber has to do with high standards of quality, services, respect

and the strict supervision of consumers. As long as they keep such

standards (positioning) more and more taxi drivers wil l have to combat

their old-fashioned style by working well and provide a better service.