New £100,000 London taxi advertising campaign set to launch next month

The London black taxi industry are set to launch a new PR campaign to entice passengers back into cabs as lockdown measures ease.

The campaign, lead by the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association (LTDA), is likely to start next month, focusing on radio listeners in the capital.

The first part of campaign, running throughout July, will feature on radio station LBC. According to LTDA sources, nearly 6,000 slots will be booked and spread across the day on all presenters' shows during the popular 24-hour station broadcast.

There will be two different adverts based on the same theme, with more advertising planned in the months ahead dependant on the number of people returning to work. Further adverts in August and September could feature both on radio and digital billboards across the capital.

The whole campaign is likely to cost around £100,000.

Steve McNamara, LTDA General Secretary, said: “As London slowly, very slowly begins to return to some sort of normality we have been working hard designing an advertising  campaign to promote the trade and establish us as the only transport option that is clean, partitioned and where social distancing is possible.

“We set a budget of £100,000 and thought long and hard about the best medium to use, and the best time to launch to get maximum impact. Had we launched too soon the message could become lost, before most people started venturing out, too late and we could lose the momentum.”

McNamara added: “Together with our campaign team we looked at all the options. TV is massively expensive and with so many channels its almost impossible to target our key London and home counties audience. The free press such as the Metro is picked up at tube stations and bus stops and with less capacity on buses and tubes the potential audience is reduced, with the same applying to adverts on the tube itself."

Taxi image credit: @MMogardo (Twitter)