Is your campaign message right for your business? 3 Lessons well learnt from Uber
Last month, Uber released a stirring advert, celebrating community spirit and thanking people for not using their ride-hailing services during Covid-19.
But, then, just last week, they laid off 3,500 workers - via a 3 and half minute Zoom call.
The juxtaposition in the communication to customers and workers is sharp and shows a complete lack of consistency in the company’s messaging. It begs the question: how did Uber get their campaign message so wrong?
Their customer advert is full of sentimentality, creating a feeling that ‘we’re all in this together’. It features a woman holding a homemade ‘have a nice day sign’, a Post-It note on an apartment door reading, ‘let us know if you need anything’ and plenty of smiling faces on video chats.
But jump forward a month and we have a very different message to employees: two Uber managers telling 3,500 staff members by one Zoom call that Uber is ‘eliminating’ them from the business. Hear that word from an employee perspective: eliminating. The call also included a short, ‘today will be your last working day with Uber’.
Not exactly the community spirit they were promoting four weeks before.
Now, it would be wrong to not mention that the Uber employee delivering the news is obviously upset about making thousands redundant. But individuals aside, Uber as a company are way off the mark with their communications.
Here’s why their current message isn’t right for their business and what we can learn from it.
1) Campaign messages need to work for everyone - customers and staff
What was intended as a heartwarming campaign message for customers now comes as a slap in the face for Uber’s staff.
Though the advert’s encouragement of social distancing is apt, it’s appreciation for customers not using Uber’s services (and not paying Uber drivers their living) is tone deaf. The line, ‘Thank you for not riding with Uber’ can’t be a great way of making staff feel valued and from this, their employees may sense they are unsupported, overlooked and disposable. We hope that Uber communicated the campaign to all staff beforehand to help them understand the messaging.
When creating a campaign message, it’s vital to tailor it to the audience - what do they need? What problems are they facing? What do they relate to? You need to know this so that you can engage your target customers. For all these questions, Uber’s consumer advert has an answer.
But in ignoring staff needs (in Uber’s case, no doubt their staff’s desire for reassurance and solidity at a hugely unnerving time), companies can undermine their employees’ motivation, job satisfaction and engagement levels. If staff feel under-appreciated by messages given out, they may question their purpose - and if you don’t care, neither will they. Disregarding staff in campaign messages is a sure fire way to decrease their productivity and damage business.
However, since many of Uber’s undervalued staff are now redundant, it’s not just a diminished work ethic that is at risk. Instead, in today’s age of social media, their negative reviews and opinions can still massively undermine the business’s reputation from the outside and every organisation should be aware of this potential damage.
With this in mind, it is well worth taking some time to evaluate whether your company messages benefit both your customers AND staff. Don’t be afraid to alter things if they are not working for everyone.
2) Campaign messages need to be relevant - but don’t forget about the future
To appeal to an audience’s current situation, campaign messages should try to centre on relevant circumstances. But with Uber’s latest message, they seemed to focus on the present and not look to the potential future.
By focusing on appearing grateful for people staying home, they forgot to think about how that message would sting if the impacts of it resulted in them having to lay off workers.
Of course, campaign messages can’t ignore the current situation so it would have been inappropriate for Uber to communicate that people should be driving around when, of course, they should be at home. But by misjudging the sentiment and tone, they now have an advert thanking people for not using their services at a time when they’ve had to make mass redundancies.
With a good campaign message, relevance is key but so is consistency. You need to hammer home ideas that will stay palatable for long periods so audiences get the chance to understand what your brand stands for. If your message can’t stay true and in tune for a decent length of time, then it probably won’t sit well with any of the audiences for long either.
3) Campaign messages need to be believable
For audiences to truly trust and engage with a business, they must connect and believe its messages are true. In this way, they can feel that a company’s products or services are something they need to use or that the brand is something they want to be associated with.
However, Uber will struggle to create a believable message now they have massively contradicted themselves. Though their advert speaks volumes about supporting others, this isn’t convincing when people can see some realities of how they ‘support’ staff.
The cold language used in the video call informing employees of layoffs, coupled with the method for communicating such solemn news doesn’t lead people to believe it’s the warm and caring company that it’s campaign message suggests. Though there are local rules to follow when informing staff of redundancies, and though these legalities may make for cool business-speak, it’d be wise to communicate that these are necessary formalities to create clarity for them at this time.
The key to creating a believable message is to ensure you base it around your company’s real value-system. What do you care about? What or who do you put first?
In normal circumstances, a taxi company will care about getting people from A-Z - though, understandably, brands are now concerned with adjusting messages for isolation. To do this, Uber could have simply communicated their experiences during isolation with a different sentiment, or placed a larger focus on their UberEats brand.
While Uber’s vision with their initial lockdown customer ad was strong and positive, tying well into a corporate responsibility programme, sadly, it backfired when making so many employees redundant so soon after.
Adjusting messaging certainly shouldn’t involve ideas that don’t resonate with your business. After all, audiences aren’t daft - they can see through marketing cliches and adverts that play on heart strings. What they want is real. Staying true to your business and all of your audiences will allow for a more significant message that will resonate for the long haul.