The taxi e-hailing app mytaxi has launched a new multimedia campaign in Ireland aimed at attracting new drivers to the taxi industry as part of its ongoing push to meet surging customer demand.
The campaign is supported by Guns or Knives, and involves a €120,000 marketing spend to date on digital, outdoor and media advertisements.
According to Roisin O’Brien, head of marketing: “While there was a drop-off in the overall number of licensed taxi drivers in Ireland in 2017, over 1300 new drivers have joined the mytaxi fleet since September and this greatly helps our ability to service customer demand, especially at peak times. Our new advertising campaign is building momentum in this respect and plays up the light-hearted and playful personality that embodies mytaxi, in tandem with highlighting the appealing career possibilities that are possible by becoming a licensed taxi driver and joining the mytaxi fleet.”
Ireland’s largest taxi e-hailing app, mytaxi carried 3.8m passengers in Ireland in the fourth quarter of 2017, with the average number of trips undertaken per driver up 30% year-on-year.
To boost taxi supply, mytaxi has created the mytaxi manual, a free online learning platform in Ireland to help potential drivers pass the NTA’s challenging SPSV entry test. The innovative learning platform incorporates the use of spaced repetition which automatically helps focus users on questions where they are weak. mytaxi has developed the material with the help of data from 20m Dublin taxi journeys to identify the most important locations for taxi drivers to know. This modern approach utilises embedded Google Street View and Google Maps content to provide visual context for users while preparing for the difficult entrance exam.
mytaxi is also offering €1m in incentives for the first 500 drivers who pass the SPSV test using the manual training platform, with 80 already passing in this way.
“We continue to be really focused on growing our fleet, bringing new drivers into the sector and our financial and technical support is available to ambitious candidates to make this happen,” O’Brien added.
According to the NTA, between 2008 and 2017, the total number of SPSVs, in particular taxis, declined by 24%, with recent statistics showing that there is a total of 26,012 licensed taxi drivers in Ireland, representing a net loss of 400 drivers in 2017.
