Uber’s PR Nightmare: 3 Lessons For Brands

Uber has stum­bled into a PR night­mare. Its rep­u­ta­tion has been dam­aged and loy­al cus­tomers are upset. What can brands learn from this?

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

Brands no longer get to dom­i­nate news cycles and adver­tis­ing to own the mes­sage they want to share. Search engines and social media are impor­tant and often dom­i­nant cus­tomer touch points. Ensur­ing that brand per­cep­tion and mes­sag­ing is respon­sive and thought­ful is imper­a­tive to Uber’s next steps. One of the goals of Momen­tol­ogy as a resource is to teach mar­keters how to be vis­i­ble and per­sua­sive in moments that mat­ter. This may be the most impor­tant moment in Uber’s young his­to­ry.


Uber has stum­bled into a PR night­mare after their Senior VP of Busi­ness Emil Michael shared a poten­tial strat­e­gy at a pri­vate din­ner par­ty that out­lined spend­ing $1 mil­lion to dig up dirt on sev­er­al jour­nal­ists. The jour­nal­ists were report­ing on a hand­ful of unseem­ly Uber inci­dents, includ­ing a mis­guid­ed response to female pas­sen­gers’ accu­sa­tions of being attacked (respons­es includ­ed the irrel­e­vant obser­va­tions that the women were “dressed provoca­tive­ly” or “drunk”).

The Dangers of Negative Online Mentions

Mul­ti­ple arti­cles by high-pro­file pub­li­ca­tions are opin­ing on the issue, as well as rec­om­mend­ing oth­er apps rid­ers can adopt to aban­don Uber. Those sto­ries are dom­i­nat­ing any search on the brand.

Adding insult to injury, one of their investors, Ash­ton Kutch­er, shared a tweet short­ly after the inci­dent that said, “What is so wrong about dig­ging up dirt on a shady jour­nal­ist?” Now it’s not just one per­son hav­ing behaved poor­ly, but oth­er brand voic­es are defend­ing the pro­posed, though the­o­ret­i­cal, action of attacks and smear cam­paigns on the jour­nal­ists and their fam­i­lies.

Now all of these sto­ries, the pub­li­ca­tions as well as social men­tions, reviews, and influ­encer response, are dom­i­nat­ing Uber’s online rep­u­ta­tion.

Uber is feel­ing the pain as well. Peo­ple are increas­ing­ly search­ing for infor­ma­tion on how to can­cel an Uber account, and their down­load rank­ings have fall­en, from 24 to 41, since the inci­dent, Digi­day report­ed.

How Can Uber Fix This?

When Airbn­b’s recent logo redesign got bad press for mim­ic­k­ing oth­er logos (and for look­ing like lady parts) they were tak­en aback by their cre­ative blun­der but they quick­ly owned it, dealt col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with the affect­ed com­pa­ny, shared why they were OK with it, and moved on. Their cul­ture of cre­at­ing a sense of place and belong­ing trumped a cre­ative mis­take.

Airbnb is known for their enor­mous­ly cus­tomer-cen­tric focus in their ser­vice offer­ings and in their ethos. Airbnb employ­ees are encour­aged to share Airbnb killers, what would dis­rupt and even kill the busi­ness? This activ­i­ty helps them to beat com­pe­ti­tion to inno­va­tion.

Airbnb respond­ed quick­ly and appro­pri­ate­ly, dif­fus­ing what could have been a neg­a­tive issue and began dom­i­nat­ing the PR cycle with a cus­tomer-cen­tric video that bril­liant­ly extols the virtues of the brand, their ser­vice, and their cus­tomers. It’s this kind of speedy and thought­ful reac­tion that Uber is cur­rent­ly miss­ing.

What Can Brands Learn From This?

1. Know Your ‘Why’

Brand rep­re­sen­ta­tives are less like­ly to go rogue in their approach if their why has been strong­ly estab­lished. Align­ing core val­ues to actions is a big part of estab­lish­ing a brand voice.

When Michael spoke as a leader and com­pa­ny spokesper­son, he was the brand. The words he choose, the actions he took, the sto­ries he told became irrev­o­ca­bly woven into the brand real­i­ty and the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.

Expect every­one on the team to know and do their best to exem­pli­fy your val­ues as a brand. It’s been evi­dent in the days fol­low­ing the inci­dent that Uber has­n’t clar­i­fied their why and that they aren’t uni­fied on next steps.

2. Nothing Is Off The Record

Gone are the days of secret meet­ings and off site issue res­o­lu­tion that lives in a vac­u­um. For bet­ter or worse, your brands’ wins and loss­es will like­ly be exposed to the sun­light.

Make it clear in your copy guides and social media guide­lines and poli­cies how brand rep­re­sen­ta­tives are to behave and speak. Cre­at­ing that expec­ta­tion in the begin­ning will make it less like­ly that some­one strays from your brand val­ues and embraces them at all times, not just when there’s an audi­ence.

3. Involve The Right Teams For Resolving An Issue

Uber’s staff and cus­tomers are left to grasp at straws as to what this means for their core brand mes­sage and val­ues. Involv­ing the right teams – lead­er­ship, con­tent, search, social, PR, even paid media – to ral­ly around a strong uni­fied mes­sage allows for their sto­ry to become a part of the cus­tomer jour­ney and col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly move pass the mis­take.

How This Affects Their Customers

In 2014 I spent more than $3,000 on Uber. I have lived my whole life in Ore­gon until the sum­mer of 2012. With my kids in col­lege, I embarked on a work/exploration adven­ture that took me to Cleve­land and Atlanta.

As a native Ore­gon­ian I had always owned a car. The small 6,000 pop­u­la­tion town where I raised my fam­i­ly for 18 years was 60 miles from the city. I loved the car and the inde­pen­dence and think­ing time it pro­vid­ed.

Dur­ing my 2 1/2 year trip to the Mid­west and the south, I choose not to have a car, most­ly because I worked close to the office but also, frankly, because I was a lit­tle ter­ri­fied of dri­ving in a city. I loved Cleve­land, great the­ater (largest per­form­ing arts cen­ter in the coun­try out­side of New York), amaz­ing food and world-class muse­ums and sym­pho­ny. But pub­lic trans­porta­tion was abysmal and taxi cabs were unre­li­able.

When I moved to Atlanta I was thrilled to have Uber as my main source of trans­porta­tion (I had expe­ri­enced Uber in Seat­tle years ago and loved it). Uber became not only the way I got to the air­port and to client meet­ings, but how I explored a city that was unknown to me.

Uber took me to din­ners and plays and speak­ing engage­ments. It kept me safe when I decid­ed that, yes, I would have one more mar­ti­ni with extra olives. It picked up friends at the air­port vis­it­ing from out of town who want­ed to see what it looked like for a Pacif­ic North­west farm girl to live in a 31st floor high rise. It intro­duced me to an amaz­ing chef who had moved from New Orleans with his wife and drove for Uber because he had health issues that made it hard to sus­tain the demand­ing long hours of stand­ing required to cook in a large restau­rant.

The Uber expe­ri­ence inspired loy­al­ty in me. That loy­al­ty has been destroyed.

As a faith­ful cus­tomer I want­ed noth­ing more than to sup­port Uber and help set the record straight. They could have shared data show­ing how much safer Uber is than oth­er taxi ser­vices. They could have swift­ly and thought­ful­ly addressed the issues.

So far, Uber has select­ed soft mea­sures and avoid­ance as their mes­sage. They haven’t addressed cus­tomer needs or con­cerns as a cus­tomer so I’m faced with aban­don­ing an app and a ser­vice I had loved and val­ued.

Whether or not they like it, Uber is faced with los­ing me and cus­tomers like me who will take their $3,000 a year some­where else. Ben Smith of Buz­zFeed said he would quit using the ser­vice and he along with many influ­encers are sup­port­ing this action. The rev­enue impact from this mis­step is already emerg­ing and the bleed­ing like­ly won’t stop until they define who they are and align their val­ues with their actions.

Who Will Step Up for Uber?

We’re in love with the tech­nol­o­gy and the ser­vice, but what mat­ters next is which voic­es win in the Uber cul­ture. Is it win at any cost with con­tin­ued aggres­sion and insen­si­tiv­i­ty, or slow down and rede­fine who they are and win in the long run? Who will step up for Uber?

The investors, the dri­vers, exec­u­tive lead­er­ship?

My step­dad, Wal­ly Back­man, start­ed for the Mets in 1986 when they won the World Series and he coach­es their AAA team the Vegas 51s. When watch­ing their play­off games this year he shared some rel­e­vant man­ag­ing advice. “Every­one is a lit­tle scared to step up…you nev­er real­ly know who is going to step up, but those who do define the game.”

Who is going to step up, make amends and fol­low through with promis­es that will fix and refo­cus Uber? The voic­es win­ning today are those rec­om­mend­ing oth­er dri­ving ser­vices.

Find­ing their way to being cus­tomer-cen­tric, earn­ing back our loy­al­ty and being vis­i­ble and per­sua­sive in moments that mat­ter does­n’t just hap­pen for Uber when the cus­tomer is in the car. It’s hap­pen­ing all the time – even when exec­u­tive lead­er­ship sits down to din­ner.

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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