BBH has won rampant taxi app Uber’s UK advertising business. Uber previously used Creature for some projects.
Such has been Uber’s performance in the UK – London particularly – that you might wonder why they need an agency but, every now and then, Uber walks into a firefight as it did recently in London with the capital’s famously Luddite black cab drivers and their supporters in London government. Having an agency on hand is pretty useful when such events occur.
As to building the Uber brand, tech ‘disrupters’ have actually been a useful source of income for agencies and conventional media companies in recent years. Recent figures from Thinkbox showed that such companies – led by Facebook – are the fastest-growing advertiser group on terrestrial TV, even though their advertising comes in fits and starts. Last year Lucky Generals won Twitter although we’ve yet to see a campaign.
BBH, which has had a rough couple of years by its own high standards – despite winning Tesco although that seems to be the client no-one can crack – has been putting on business recently, which will be a relief to them and owner Publicis Groupe. And if BBH struggles to crack Uber Publicis Communications boss Arthur Sadoun can always parachute in a team from elsewhere in his empire to help out, as he’s doing with Ray-Ban. That would go down very well in BBH’s Kingly Street HQ.
