Plan are pleased to announce pledged funds to support London Taxi PR. Their campaign is dedicated to “the promotion of the world famous and iconic Licensed London Black Taxi trade.”

London Taxi PR has been created by two working green badge drivers, Lee Sheppard and Gary Long, each with over 20 years experience. Both men are passionate about the cab trade and fear their livelihoods are at risk. They attribute this to the fact that, “The whole trade has been affected by outside interference from third parties, causing a downturn within our business.”

London Taxi PR came about because, as Lee explains, the two men felt “That enough was enough. Now more than ever its time for us as a trade to start to look after our own promotion.”

Aim: to raise the profile of the London licensed Taxi trade through positive promotional campaigns.

They intend to raise money to spend on advertising by requesting donations from within the trade.

Potential donors include: taxi drivers, cab garages, taxi insurance companies, taxi meter companies, cab unions, trade organisations and eateries. 100% of all money they raise will go towards the promotion of the London cab trade.

As you should expect from two cabbies they’ve an eye for a deal and manage to negotiate favourable rates with advertisers to get great value for money. Since forming in March 2015 they have built up strong connections with advertising agencies. This is evidenced by the fact they have worked in partnership with taxi media companies JC Decaux and Famous Publicity PR to implement advertising campaigns that promote the trade in a positive.

Campaigns: focus on highlighting to paying customers the benefits and advantages of using a licensed London Taxi.

These advantages include that fact that London taxi drivers having completed gruelling knowledge examinations as well as safety, trust and availability factors. Lee explains more about the reasoning behind the campaign,

“We constantly promote every other business on our iconic vehicles but as a trade we’ve never had an independent company solely dedicated to producing advertising campaigns that promote our business on a continual basis – until now. We are a world recognised brand but unlike other brands that spend millions to remain at the forefront of consumers minds we as a trade spend nothing! We aim to change this, and with the help of all within our trade it can be achieved.”

So far they have raised £6,000 for a street level ad campaign that appeared on fifty four telephone kiosks situated in London’s West End. They raised a further £1,000 for a social media campaign that targeted specific audiences.

London Taxi PR are now attempting to raise a sum of £14,000 for a month long campaign that will appear in thirty of London’s busiest clubs and bars as well as eight train stations.  

The estimated reach of this campaign is over 3.2 million views in the four week period. To ensure that London Taxi PR’s messaging is continuously prominent in the capital they need financial support from the trade. They are ideally seeking monthly contributions from the cab trade via direct debit. This will enable the industrious pair to accurately budget all future campaigns. Lee passionately goes into the logic behind the requested donation amount,

“Our trade collectively has to pull together and support itself. If 3,000 drivers signed up to for a £10 monthly contribution this would allow us to bring about continuous monthly campaigns, like our “Take a ride in London’s pride” street campaign, all year round. This trade has the potential to contribute hundreds of thousands towards promoting and advertising itself.

We are the world’s best taxi service and it’s about time we took pride in that and reminded London and the world’s commuters of this statement of fact! The continued longevity and existence of our trade is of paramount importance to everyone within the industry. If we lose a driver on the street then the whole trade loses. We are after all one trade!”

At Plan we applaud their energy, enthusiasm and dedication to trying to make a positive difference on behalf of the cab trade as a whole.