Uber is a business that solely operates by the use of modern technology, and it is essentially a platform that connects people who want a service, passengers, with people who can provide a service, the drivers. However, Uber is not marketed as a full time job; instead it is advertised as a way for people to make some extra cash with their free time. At the same time, it is marketed as a better alternative to the traditional taxi service; being both cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable. Uber’s awareness of their reputation is becoming visible in their marketing strategies and comments, and it is clear that as Uber becomes more efficient at connecting passengers and drivers, the company is losing its filter in it’s marketing campaign.

Travis Kalanick, the CEO of Uber, is not very different from Guy Swift. They both speak in a way that might make one think, “No way, that has to be an act.” For example, “You see a happy brand is a learning brand,” and, “[our brand is] is efficiency with elegance on top” are both scowl-inducing, artificial businessman quotes that could be applied to either Swift or Kalanick (Holmes). Their slick businessman style of speech wouldn’t have been a problem if they weren’t the faces of their respective companies, the voices heard when people read all their slick, but ultimately ineffective advertisements.

Uber, like Tomorrow*, felt too much like the offspring of some white guy in Paris who was annoyed that he couldn’t get a taxi cab and decided to make an app that would make his life easier (“Finding the Way”). Uber did not have that grit or respect for tradition that Al-Rahman, the businessman who criticized Swift’s love of artificial circles and maps, was looking for in Tomorrow* and it made Uber inaccessible. It was not grounded in anything human and that can be seen in their former advertisements that implied one would have to be impossibly chiseled to get an Uber. Kalanick admitted it himself, “the early app was an attempt at something luxury,” something for him and his “hundred friends” to use to “roll around San Francisco like ballers” (Hempel). Recently, however, Kalanick seems to have had a change of heart.

One difference between Kalanick and Guy Swift’s strategies is the idea of universality. Guy Swift tried to enforce his same basic business model into every potential client. As we saw with the golf course example, this isn’t always the most feasible idea. Still, Guy is very confident with his business model and wants every client to assimilate to it. Uber, on the other hand, has recently introduced itself as a more diverse brand. A recent Wired article about Uber’s rebranding says “it felt wrong for Uber’s global and local brands to revolve around the color preferences of a rich, white guy in California—even if that rich, white guy in California is the CEO.” Later on, the article says that “Uber may be a global brand, but it is a local business.” This provides a lot of insight into Uber’s new marketing techniques and the way it applies to Transmission. Just like the Leela virus managed to effect several regions of the world, Uber does the same. In poor regions of the world, where public transportation and infrastructure are lacking, Uber can be a very dramatic breakthrough and Kalanick seems to be realizing this. Uber is seeking to advertise differently in order to relate to poor people in the country and overseas. Guy, on the other hand, wanted everyone to assimilate. Everything needed to be sleek and rich. There was no room for the poor or the modest in Kalanick's royal club.

The key word concerning Guy’s world view, however, is “was.” By the end of Transmission, Guy went from an urbanite to a pot-making hermit. Kalanick’s recent, more grounded marketing decisions are not as dramatic as Guy’s lifestyle change, but a parallel can be drawn between the two and how they went from sleek-obsessed white guys to more grounded people trying to connect. Kalanick does not want Uber to be for his baller friends anymore. He wants the app to be for everyone, so the brand has shifted from sleek to inviting with it’s new logo and marketing ploys that demonstrate their acceptance of diversity as seen with the words “Across borders, cultures, and languages” scrawled on the “About Us” page of their website, and a strive for togetherness as evidenced by their recent flu shot campaign where drivers delivered medical care packages to app users (Brownstein). It is entirely possible and probable that Kalanick’s change of heart was for money, but instead of pushing the idea of Uber as a luxury brand, Kalanick went in the “everyman’s ride-sharing app” direction, a decision that helps us understand Guy Swift’s lifestyle change at the end of Transmission. Maybe, after years of being a baller, obsessing over brands and saying things like “Welcome to club Europa, the world’s VIP room,” Guy wanted something tangible, a connection to something real. Kalanick’s “real” is the everyday man; Swift’s “real” is the Earth; both surprised us with their desire for something real, but maybe that’s the direction the world will go. The influx of sleek technology may have us craving for a little more dirt.

By understanding the marketing of Tomorrow* in Transmission, we are able to also understand Uber and vice versa. They both use strategies that attract the consumer to the product in a way that draws the product away from the company in order for the product to relate to the public. This is evident with the previously mentioned articles that explain the way in which Uber is trying to connect to marketing to the public in various different ways. An example from Transmission is the presentation Guy gives to the owners of the golf course in Dubai and later on in the story for a European bureaucracy. With these two presentations, Guy presents his company in a way that would be able to service anyone of any age with prestigious amenities. This helps us understand the world of Uber in the sense of the similar marketing traits that Uber projects. As established previously, Uber projects its image of being available to everyone but also has a branch of marketing for those who want to ride with luxury. Both Tomorrow* and Uber created an atmosphere within their marketing that gave audiences a sense of relativity and luxury, maybe in order to be more accessible to the places it has recognized as a stain instead of as part of the global community.

In a place like the Bay Area, where many of the citizens are upper-middle class, Uber is somewhat of a luxury. It is convenient, but there are plenty other means of transportation available. The marketing of Uber transformed into directing itself towards the passengers and drivers and ultimately compromising their marketing campaign filters.

Authors: J.Kean │C. Villalta│A. Rodriguez│L. Konrai│K. McPhillips│Stephen Shaffer│