How Mercury Energy created ‘the world’s first taxi powered by good energy’ as part of an integrated campaign via Whybin\TBWA Auckland
WhybinTBWATequila, Auckland recently introduced Mercury Energy’s ‘Good Energy’ Taxi – a taxi cab that runs on nothing but the good vibes between people: between passengers, the driver, pedestrians and anyone that might come into contact with it, and even people who hear about it online.
Because instead of passengers having to pay for a fare with cash, they just asked them to pay with ‘good energy’ – by having fun, by being kind and sharing their own good natured-ness with those around them. All they asked is that people say and do nice things for each other in the real world and online and in doing so their taxi – ride would be free.
You see, every positive tweet, every Facebook like, and every generous act that they were part of, gave the taxi’s battery a boost allowing it to go further, and to make its way around the city. Be nice to the driver and the battery gets charged, do a good deed and it gets a really big boost. And random acts of kindness like stopping the Taxi to help someone out means you might get a free trip all the way to the airport.
In only two weeks, the good energy generated by over 500 passengers fuelled the taxi over 2,700km and made hundreds of smiles and heaps of good deeds all possible.
In doing so, they emphasized the ‘car’ in good Karma. And ‘paid it forward’ so no-one had to pay a fare.
All hail the Good Energy Taxi.
7 Comments
whoops interns and junior creative in the pr shots!
snapped. Rookie scam mistake interns/juniors.
The earlier photo used in the article was from the pre-launch publicity shots for the Good Energy Taxi, so yes as you’d expect we used talent for those.
We had the taxi driving around for a couple of weeks picking up all sorts of great people from all over Auckland, even some local celebrities thanks to the awesome team at Eleven PR! 🙂
Presumably a big part of this campaign was the social/viral impact it would have. As of today, Mercury Energy appears to have 640 Twitter followers and 9,721 Facebook Likes. Assuming they have somewhere in the region of 250,000 customers, it’s not exactly a massive result. Their advertising, like their core product & service offering, seems to have a large element of ‘who cares’ about it.
How about ‘good value energy’, that’d be better: more appealing.
I saw this, it was all over the news. No wait. It wasn’t. The whole ‘good energy’ thing is so bloody patronizing it’s no wonder no one cares about this.
It was actually on TVNZ Breakfast I think…