When Uber Technologies Inc. launched its UberX ride-hailing service in Toronto last September, it went out of its way to make a splash, offering the first ride to Maple Leafs star forward Phil Kessel in a Tesla Model S.
When it launched in Edmonton three months later, there were no hockey stars and no fancy electric cars. Instead, Uber offered free pickups of Goodwill clothing donations.
It was a noticeable shift in strategy and an apparent response to the growing public relations disaster that had developed in the interim.
Toronto responded to UberX, which has raised the ire of the taxi industry by hiring drivers without commercial licenses, by asking for a court injunction against the service. That hearing is scheduled for next month.
A few days prior to Toronto’s legal challenge, Uber executive Emil Michael set off a firestorm of controversy when he suggested that the company hire a team of investigators to dig up dirt on Uber’s critics. Around the same time, an Uber manager in New York used an internal tracking tool called God View to monitor the movements of a visiting reporter.
Adding fuel to the fire, Uber was then banned in the Indian capital of New Delhi after a driver was accused of raping a passenger. Pile on several legal challenges around the globe and controversy over Uber’s use of surge pricing during a hostage-taking in downtown Sydney and it amounted to a difficult few months.
“I think Uber’s learned the hard way that PR is an important part of a business strategy,” said Paul Wilke, founder of San Francisco-based Upright Position Communications, a PR firm that specializes in companies planning to go public.
Andrew Macdonald, regional general manager for Uber Central, which includes all of Canada and the Central U.S., admits that Uber hasn’t always been in control of its message.
“Internally, we know what we’re doing and we’re proud of it and we believe in it and we’ve bought into that mission,” Macdonald said in an interview.
“I think we need to step back sometimes and say, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s not necessarily obvious to everyone what we’re doing, the good we’re doing, the impact we’re having.’ … We need to tell the story better.”
Uber has been making a concerted effort to present a kinder, gentler face to the public in recent months.
After its privacy debacle in November, the company hired the law firm Hogan Lovells to conduct an internal review of its data-privacy efforts.
And a series of smaller initiatives in communities worldwide indicate that Uber is trying to improve its standing on a local level.
For example, Uber set up a breathalyzer test on a busy Toronto bar strip on St. Patrick’s Day, offering free rides home to anyone who was over the legal limit. The company also has a formal alliance with Mothers Against Drunk Driving in the U.S., although not in Canada. And there’s the Goodwill partnership, which collected over 5,000 pounds of clothing in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton last year and will soon be rolled out in several U.S. cities as well.
“It appears to be the kind of thing companies do when they’re feeling the pain of public condemnation,” said veteran PR strategist Larry Kamer, CEO of Oakland, Calif.-based Kamer Consulting Group.
He added that tech startups are “notoriously hard to convince about PR,” and often don’t realize its importance until they are “hit in the head with a two-by-four” of public backlash.
Before the worst of the crisis hit late last year, Uber hired David Plouffe — best known as Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign manager — as its senior vice-president for policy and strategy.
“Earlier this year, I made it a top priority for Uber to find a leader who could help cities and citizens understand the Uber mission — someone who believed in our cause, who understood how to build a meaningful brand, who knew how to scale a political campaign, and who knew how to get the support on the ground to win,” Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said in announcing Plouffe’s appointment.
“We needed someone who understood politics but who also had the strategic horsepower to reinvent how a campaign should be run.”
PR strategist Wilke said he suspects Uber’s recent shift in strategy is part of Plouffe’s master plan.
“That’s why Uber hired him — they needed to drastically change the face of the company in a way that shows it in a kinder, gentler light,” Wilke said.
Macdonald said two things have changed at Uber to help support its new community-focused PR strategy: it is “maturing as an organization” and, at the same time, achieving the scale it needs to take on big partnerships with well-known charities like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Goodwill.
Uber has also faced a concerted negative PR campaign from taxi drivers, which has pushed it to polish its own strategy, Macdonald said.
Uber is poised to be a leader in using its market power to do some good
“We need to counter the narrative which is put out there by folks with an interest in the status quo that Uber’s a negative influence, because it’s just not true,” he said.
The next step for Uber is to prove that it’s genuine in its charitable efforts and not just trying to get the critics off its back, Kamer said.
He pointed to Netflix, where a 2011 fee hike caused the stock to plunge 40 per cent and some to call for the CEO’s resignation, or Nike, which overcame a ‘90s sweatshop scandal by reforming its supply chain, as examples that Uber should follow.
“Uber is poised to be a leader in using its market power to do some good,” Kamer said.
“If it commits itself to that sincerely, consistently, year over year … then we could be talking about them in a couple of years as one of these companies that blundered, got up and showed the world just how smart and talented they really are.”
