If I Did Advertising/Marketing For Yellow Cab

Seems everyone wants to get into the Yellow Cab, "I need a ride" business.

There's Uber and Lyft, Sidecar, Curb, Hailo and I don't know how many others (see link below). All of them want to do the same thing. That is, give us a ride, give you a ride but at a lower price for you and all because THEY DON'T HAVE ANY (or many) EMPLOYEES. They don't have steady, ongoing, official employees they have to pay wages or benefits.

Yes, isn't that a wonderful thing?

Those pesky things, employees, what with their need for wages and maybe a pension plan for when they inevitably get old and health insurance and all that.  What nerve.

And who's taking it on the chin?

Well, Yellow Cab companies and all like them, first of all, but more than that, of course, but, again, those pesky employees. Of Yellow Cab.

And that's not Yellow Cab's only problem, either. Technology will also be throwing this little, soon to be huge, problem at them, too:

Autonomous Vehicles 

Will Replace Taxi Drivers

I got to thinking about this.

If I were the owner of a large Yellow Cab franchise, I think I came up with the perfect way to "fight back", Capitalism style, with advertising. Here's what I'd do.

I'd run TV ads, at least pointing out the benefits of cabs over these "ride sharing" programs.

What benefits, you might ask? The ad would be something like this:

 Need a ride? 

 Call Yellow Cab, for all the benefits! 

 No additional "up-front" fees to "join"! 

 No membership to purchase! 

 No app to download! 

 No information (of yours) to share (with us)! 

 No information of yours sold (by us) to other companies! 

  Just one flat fee, as you know, per mile, with a friendly face at the wheel! 

 So, next time you need a ride, keep it simple and SAVE! 

 CALL YELLOW CAB!! 

Then, I'd get with my fellow Yellow Cab company operators, coast to coast, and make the ads available to them and at a terrific, low price, strength being in numbers and all. I'd also pitch the program to Labor Unions. No group understands standing together better than Unions. Heck, I'd even let my drivers and the employees unionize.

The owners of all those cabs have to know their ridership and so, profits are down. They also need to know they need to both stand together, as a group, but also have people "in their corner", so to speak and no one could do that better for them, being "in their corner", supporting them than Unions of all kinds, coast to coast.

All the cab companies better realize it's a changing, vastly changing world out there. They need to respond to it or they're going to go the way of the wagon train.

Link:

Looking for a Ride? Here's a List of Uber Alternatives