In London, a Sales Pitch with Your Cab Ride

LONDON — American tourists have long been fans of London's roomy black taxicabs and their colorful drivers' gift of gab. But these days, tourists can expect more than a memorable journey and forceful opinions.

They can expect a sales pitch.

Drivers of black cabs are being recruited as the latest weapons of businesses seeking to use word-of-mouth advertising to entice passengers to buy their products or services.

"Drivers spend an average of 16 minutes with a passenger and that's a lot of time for someone to have with a captive audience," said Asher Moses, managing director of Taxi Promotions UK, the agency that facilitates the ad campaigns.

Already about a dozen drivers have been recruited to promote www.888.com, an online gambling business, while another five have been called upon by the Tourism Authority of Thailand to talk about the benefits of traveling to that country.

By the end of the year Moses expects to have as many as 300 cab drivers involved in marketing schemes across Britain.

"Obviously you can't bombard passengers with a bunch of brand awareness messages," Moses said. "But a driver can tell if a passenger will be receptive to having a conversation."

For example, in the promotion orchestrated by Thai tourism authorities, drivers might comment on London's dreadful weather.

The passenger's response will enable drivers to get a sense of that passenger's receptiveness to hearing a sales pitch.

"Drivers can go on to talk about holiday destinations that are nice and sunny and then go on to say something about Thailand," Moses said. "Drivers can tell if a passenger is willing to talk or if they just want to sit and read a newspaper or stare out the window."

Taxi Promotions has been working with tourism officials and charities for over a decade to facilitate the use of the exteriors of black cabs for advertising displays.

Over the years black cabs have been decked out with pitches for travel to Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Las Vegas, among other destinations.

The new program expands on this concept by bringing together drivers and advertisers through a business unit called Womad Taxis — which stands for "word of mouth."

Drivers are instructed on how to peddle a product or service — a skill that might reap free trips or even online gambling vouchers from advertisers.

Mike Harling, director of the Georgia Department of Economic Development's office in Britain, isn't sure Georgia would ever participate in such a word-of-mouth ad campaign in the future.

"I used to run an investment promotion agency in the UK in the 1990s and instigated such a campaign at considerable expense then," he said. "The results were poor as measured by real investment returns although awareness of the region being marketed was no doubt raised."

Until now, London's cab drivers have been known mostly for their uncanny ability to find any destination.

To obtain a coveted black-cab license, drivers must pass a complex test called the Knowledge that requires the memorization of more than 25,000 roads and landmarks in London.

Allyson Stewart-Allen, who heads International Marketing Partners, a cross-cultural consulting firm in London, said London's cab drivers could be an asset for more brands in the future.

"The driver as a medium is an obvious one for brands since he or she already has established a level of trust, which makes the driver's message credible," she said. "Why McDonald's hasn't yet co-opted cabbies to stop at its stores for hungry passengers in a hurry is a missed trick."