Winners & Shortlists

TAXI TRAILS

Short List
TitleTAXI TRAILS
BrandTAXI STOCKHOLM
Product/ServiceTAXI TRAILS
Category B03. CONSUMER SERVICES
Entrant Company KING Stockholm, SWEDEN
Advertising Agency KING Stockholm, SWEDEN
Production Company YOURS Stockholm, SWEDEN
Credits
Name Company Position
Frank Hollingworth King/Stockholm Creative Director
Christoffer Dymling King/Stockholm Copywriter
Josephine Wallin King/Stockholm Art Director
Johan Tesch King/Stockholm Digital Creative
Per Wilson King/Stockholm Planner
Sunit Mehrotra King/Stockholm Head Of Client Services
Peter Preisler King/Stockholm Account Director
Lena Ivarsson King/Stockholm Account Manager
Sofia Weman King/Stockholm Digital Account Director

The Campaign

Swedish taxi company, Taxi Stockholm, wanted to become more popular amongst tourists visiting Stockholm. When visiting a new city, it’s hard to know which taxi company to trust. Taxi Stockholm is Stockholm’s biggest taxi company, with over 8 million trips around the city per year. Our goal was to make tourists aware of our size so that they felt they could trust us and therefore choose us. Since our budget for this campaign was limited to 100 000 €, buying media and simply saying this wouldn’t work. We needed to create something that both foreign and national media would write about. The strategy was to turn our proof - the 8 million trips - into something useful for tourist. The problem we focused on solving was a common one when visiting a new city – if you don’t have a native friend; you easily end up on the common tourist trails. You never get to see the city as the locals do. Since all 8 million trips are tracked by GPS we could create a new type of tourist guide that could show tourists where the locals of Stockholm travelled by cab. The data was put on to Google Maps so it became interactive and was called Taxi Trails. We targeted media relevant to tourists with the news about the innovative tourist guide: travel magazines, lifestyle magazines, local newspapers and online city guides. Of course we made it easy to share and talk about the guide through twitter and facebook.

The Brief

Our goal was to make tourists aware of that fact that Taxi Stockholm is the biggest and therefore most trustworthy taxi company in Stockholm. Given that our total budget for this project was only 100 000 € simply buying media space and put an ad in Swedish and foreign media wasn’t possibly. Therefore we needed to create something that media themselves would write about and the tourist would talk about.

Results

With a total budget for this campaign of only 100 000 € the campaign was a huge success. We received PR coverage from all over the world – both in social and traditional media. The site hade visitors from over 117 countries and over 20000 people visited the site. During the campaign social mentions for Taxi Stockholm rose by a staggering 1300%. The number of mentions compared to Über was 1800% higher. The campaign had 2.6 million earned impressions. And despite record-breaking bad taxi weather – sales increased by 6% during the campaign – making it the best year since 2007. During the summer month most Stockholmers leave the city and has been doing so for many years. Therefore we believe that the increase in sales was mostly due to tourists choosing us. So in the end our goal of proving that Taxi Stockholm was a safe and trustworthy choice succeeded.

Execution

We started by putting all the data onto Google maps. From that we created a interactive and totally new type of tourist guide that we called Taxi Trails. A guide that showed where the locals of Stockholm most often travel. Based on statistics and not opinions. After that we targeted media relevant to tourists with the news about the innovative tourist guide: travel magazines, lifestyle magazines, local newspapers and online city guides. We also made it easy to share and talk about the guide through twitter and facebook. From the guide we took hot tips on where to go and printed them onto outdoor ads close to tourist’s attractions. We also handed out flyers in hotels and in our cars. As media started to talk about it we kept fuelling the conversations through our own social media channels.

The Situation

Competition on the Stockholm taxi market is fierce. And with the entrance of innovative brand Über, competition for has become even harder. Also Stockholm is also full of shady drivers that are known to trick tourist out of money. Therefore we where afraid that foreign tourist would either choose a brand they knew from home, Über, or simply choose not to travel by cab at all. The later would be the preferred choice for Swedish tourists visiting Stockholm. We needed to convince our target audience that Taxi Stockholm is the most trustworthy of all taxi companies in Stockholm.

The Strategy

The strategy was to turn our strongest proof of trustworthiness – that Taxi Stockholm has 8 million trips around the city every year – into something useful for tourists. We realized that one of the biggest problems tourists in a city have is to know where to go. Given this problem they saying is that the best way to be a tourist in a city is to know someone who lives there. But what about the tourist who don’t know anyone to guide them? Well they end up on the common tourist trails, with all the other tourists. They never get to see the city as the locals do. Since all the 8 million trips are tracked by GPS we could use this statistic to show to tourists where the locals of Stockholm really go. This way you don’t need to know a local to know where they go.