When Uber launched in London, in 2012, there were already well-developed transport systems.

Aside from trains and buses, there were 3,000 private car-hire companies.

Just one of those, Addison Lee, had 4,500 cars and turned over £90m a year.

And the ability to order a cab over a smartphone wasn’t unique, Hailo had 9,000 black cabs available on its app.

All of which made London a near-impossible market to break into.

Sure enough, the early days were very tough. Uber had just 50 drivers, its office staff consisted of three people, and one of them was an intern.

The problem was hardly anyone had even heard of Uber.

The head of the London operation, Jo Bertram, tried everything to get publicity. But the news channels just weren’t interested. Who wanted a story about another private car-hire company?

But then, in 2014, something happened to change that completely.

Uber’s biggest competitor gave Uber more publicity than it could possibly dream of.

On 11 June, London’s black-cab drivers went on strike against Uber.

Black cabs blocked Lambeth Bridge. Then black cabs blocked the roads around Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, and the West End.

There was gridlock in Westminster and Piccadilly. Central London was brought to a standstill by 8,000 black cabs protesting against Uber.

It was on every news broadcast, on every TV station, on every radio station, in every newspaper.

Jo Bertram had tried for two years to get interviews with the news media, but none of them wanted to know.

Suddenly her phone was ringing off the hook. She did an interview with Sky News at 6.30am, and 15 more interviews straight after that.

Uber went from being a name no-one had heard of, to the hottest topic on the news. Everyone wanted to find out why black cabs were so scared of Uber.

It came across as if Uber was the future and black cabs were stuck in the past.

Black-cab drivers didn’t want people to be able to hire private cars instantly, from their smartphones.

And they certainly didn’t want them to be 30% cheaper than black-cabs.

The taxi strike had given Uber more airtime than it could ever have afforded, and more cachet than any advertising campaign.

Suddenly ordinary people wanted to try Uber. Downloads of the Uber app jumped by 850%. Uber seemed new, and fashionable, and smart.

By 2018, there were 25,000 Uber drivers, that’s more than black-cab drivers.

Uber soon had 100 staff in its London office, and it now operates in 15 cities in the UK.

All because the black-cab drivers did what Uber couldn’t do for itself.

By confronting a smaller opponent directly, they elevated that opponent, in the public’s mind, to a position of parity with the market leader.

Suddenly, Uber was seen as the serious competition to black cabs.

Which is why I always advocate to clients that the very best advertising will be a campaign that hurts the competition so much they will try to get it banned.

That should be our objective: advertising that the competition tries to get banned.

Because if the competition isn’t trying to get it banned, it means it isn’t hurting them.

And if we aren’t hurting our competitors, what are we doing?

Why would we bother doing advertising that is so gentle it doesn’t bother anyone?

Why would we fill up the airwaves with ads that don’t move the needle?

Ideally we want the competition to spend their money talking about us.

That’s how you spot a great campaign.

When you can provoke the competition into doing your advertising for you.

The post GET THE COMPETITION TO DO YOUR ADVERTISING first appeared on Dave Trott's Blog.