4 Signs That Uber Hasn’t Defined Their Brand Values

Con­sumers are los­ing trust in Uber. Here are five impor­tant lessons for brands.

Lisa Williams By Lisa Williams from Sustainable Digital Marketing. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Brand val­ues are inex­tri­ca­bly bound to brand iden­ti­ty, which is defined as “the way a brand wants its con­sumers to per­ceive its brand.” Brand iden­ti­ty and val­ues now evolve and becomes shared, not only by the com­pa­ny, but by all of those involved in the cus­tomer jour­ney. Com­pa­nies old and new are tasked with clear­ly defin­ing their brand val­ues as part of brand iden­ti­ty. Here are four signs that Uber has­n’t yet clear­ly defined their brand val­ues, and five lessons for brands.


On-demand ride ser­vice Uber has strug­gled in recent weeks with PR dis­as­ters rang­ing from their VP of Busi­ness rec­om­mend­ing that they spend $1M for dig­ging up dirt on jour­nal­ists to vio­lat­ing state law and get­ting shut down in Neva­da to Uber dri­vers strik­ing for bet­ter fares to ques­tion­able use of the data they col­lect. It earned them this head­line from the New York Times: “We Can’t Trust Uber”.

So why are con­sumers los­ing trust in Uber?

1. Leadership Isn’t Believable

Uber CEO Travis Kalan­ick pub­lished a post Dec. 4 on their com­pa­ny blog, “Ride Ahead”. His state­ment focus­es on their finan­cial coups, which include recent­ly get­ting an addi­tion­al $1.2 bil­lion in fund­ing with an expect­ed val­u­a­tion of more than $40 bil­lion.

His only nod to recent neg­a­tive events in the blog post was, “This kind of growth has also come with sig­nif­i­cant grow­ing pains.” It does­n’t include any specifics about recent events or how Uber will han­dle them mov­ing for­ward. The post focus­es on con­tin­ued growth strate­gies but does­n’t illu­mi­nate how they will define brand val­ues or improve brand per­cep­tion.

2. Continued Abuse of Technology & Privacy

Uber staff was recent­ly accused of abus­ing their “God View” tech­nol­o­gy to track jour­nal­ists. When they launch their pres­ence in new cities they have been accused of using their tech­nol­o­gy to aban­don ride requests from city or oth­er offi­cials that could lever­age fines to the com­pa­ny or dri­vers.

In the New York Times arti­cle, writ­ers Zeynep Tufek­ci and Bray­den King out­line real and poten­tial abus­es of Uber data. To date the com­pa­ny has­n’t shared a pri­va­cy pol­i­cy that would pro­tect rid­er data and enforce stricter guide­lines.

3. Not Learning From Their Mistakes

When Uber launched in Port­land, Ore­gon last week, city offi­cials spoke against their sup­port and legal­i­ty of the ser­vice.

Peo­ple should know that Uber’s action is ille­gal,” May­or Char­lie Hales said in a Face­book post, “The city will enforce exist­ing reg­u­la­tions. That could include fines for the com­pa­ny, as well as fines for dri­vers.”

Though stonewalling on the city of Port­land’s part may not be sus­tain­able, ignor­ing local reg­u­la­tions con­tin­ues to be a part of Uber’s growth strat­e­gy. After being shut down in Neva­da, their recent actions in Ore­gon illus­trate they have no inten­tion of aban­don­ing their approach of com­ing to a city and bul­ly­ing their way in.

When they vow to become a “more hum­ble” com­pa­ny, but con­tin­ue to ignore local reg­u­la­tions and pro­vide ser­vice ille­gal­ly as they are doing in Port­land, it’s dif­fi­cult to take their mea cul­pas as a seri­ous effort to change brand val­ues and learn from their mis­takes.

4. Resources Aren’t Prioritized To Address Brand Values

Their first big move after their recent PR dis­as­ters was hir­ing Gold­man Sachs to raise mon­ey from the bank’s clients. Though efforts need to stay focused on growth and invest­ment par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of a like­ly IPO, Uber isn’t invest­ing in defin­ing their brand val­ue the way they are invest­ing in brand val­u­a­tion.

A recent NPR arti­cle (“Uber Is Rich­er Than Ever, But The Com­pa­ny Still Isn’t Play­ing Nice”) high­lights the com­pa­nies con­tin­ued focus on growth and lack of focus on eth­i­cal behav­ior.

There have been many inci­dents report­ed of resources pri­or­i­tized towards under­min­ing com­pe­ti­tion (ear­li­er this year Lyft accused Uber of can­cel­ing more than 5,000 rides on its ser­vice over a 10-month peri­od in an effort to sab­o­tage the com­pa­ny) and very lit­tle dis­cus­sion of cre­at­ing and pri­or­i­tiz­ing brand val­ues.

What Brands Can Learn

Uber’s mis­steps pro­vide five lessons for brands who want to be con­sumer-cen­tric and cre­ate a brand with val­ues.

1. Define And Share Your Brand Values

The world’s most valu­able brands, includ­ing Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Coca-Cola, invest heav­i­ly in cre­at­ing and shar­ing their brand val­ues. If employ­ees and cus­tomers don’t know your brand val­ues it’s not pos­si­ble for those val­ues to dri­ve behav­ior.

Coke brings joy” – this sim­ple val­ue dri­ves con­tent, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and engage­ment. The brand’s core val­ues of hap­pi­ness, refresh­ment, opti­mism, fun, sim­ple moments of plea­sure, authen­tic­i­ty and com­ing togeth­er are the dri­ving force in their mar­ket­ing and busi­ness efforts. These val­ues are the pil­lars upon which the brand is built and they are not nego­tiable.

2. Believe In Your Product

Uber’s app, its ser­vice and it’s tech­nol­o­gy are supe­ri­or. Uber’s actions indi­cate that they don’t believe that’s enough – or at least that it does­n’t get them to where they want to go quick­ly enough.

3. Invest in Leadership

The lead­er­ship that dri­ves a com­pa­ny sets the tone, the brand voice and brand per­cep­tion. Of course lead­er­ship are expect­ed to dri­ve finan­cial growth and have cre­den­tials that sup­port that ini­tia­tive but lead­er­ship is a soft skill. One that is more dif­fi­cult to test than bud­get­ing acu­men, oper­a­tional logis­tics or tech­nol­o­gy excel­lence.

The world’s most valu­able brands invest in teach­ing lead­er­ship. Google offers lead­er­ship pro­grams for learn­ing and devel­op­ment. Apple devel­ops dif­fer­ent pro­grams for store-lev­el lead­ers as well as exec­u­tive roles.

Uber has grown very quick­ly. While they’ve built in process for hir­ing the right peo­ple to solve busi­ness prob­lems, they have done lit­tle to solve the prob­lem of devel­op­ing eth­i­cal lead­er­ship.

4. Listen To Your Customers & Your Critics

Ulti­mate­ly, your brand voice and brand per­cep­tion isn’t just defined by the com­pa­ny. It’s defined by an aggre­ga­tion of voic­es includ­ing your cus­tomers and your crit­ics.

When Uber ignores dri­vers’ pleas for bet­ter fares or dis­miss­es city offi­cials’ requests to com­ply with local laws they are miss­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pos­i­tive­ly impact the strength of their brand voice.

A brave move by Uber at this point would be full trans­paren­cy into how they are address­ing their brand rep­u­ta­tion as a bul­ly. Their rel­a­tive silence on how they are respond­ing to the opin­ion that their brand is eth­i­cal­ly chal­lenged ignores the voice of cus­tomers and crit­ics.

5. Be in it for the Long Haul

In the book “The Liv­ing Com­pa­ny: Habits for Sur­vival in a Tur­bu­lent Busi­ness Envi­ron­ment” by Arie de Geus, his in-depth analy­sis out­lines four bench­marks to long-lived com­pa­nies. They were:

  1. Sen­si­tive to their envi­ron­ment.
  2. Cohe­sive, with a strong sense of iden­ti­ty.
  3. Tol­er­ant.
  4. Con­ser­v­a­tive in financ­ing.

His­to­ry is lit­tered with sto­ries of brand rise and fall in com­pa­nies new and old. As a new com­pa­ny, it isn’t sur­pris­ing that this sec­ond bench­mark, being cohe­sive with a strong sense of iden­ti­ty, isn’t ful­ly devel­oped for Uber yet.

Uber’s tech­nol­o­gy, rev­enue, val­u­a­tion, and growth tra­jec­to­ry are tan­gi­ble. Their biggest chal­lenge may be align­ing intan­gi­ble assets such as brand iden­ti­ty and val­ues with their envi­able tan­gi­ble assets.


What should Uber do to start regain­ing con­sumer trust and define their brand val­ues? Share your thoughts in the com­ments.

Lisa Williams

Written by Lisa Williams

President, Sustainable Digital Marketing

Lisa Williams is the President of Sustainable Digital Marketing. She is a 19-year veteran of online marketing and has been featured in Kiplinger Magazine, Glamour Magazine, Boston Globe and The Oregonian. She recently authored her first book, "When Everybody Clicks: Sustainable Digital Marketing". Lisa is on the SEMpdx (Search Engine Marketing Professionals of Portland Oregon) Advisory Board. She speaks at regional, national and international conferences on the topics of digital strategy, marketing integration, team development and leadership. She is available for training and consulting.

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