4 social media lessons from Australia’s #YourTaxis fiasco

The Victorian Taxi Association’s hashtag campaign to improve its image backfired. Here’s how social media managers can avoid the same fate.

Ragan Insider Premium Content
Ragan Insider Content

It sounds like a good idea: Encourage your customers to share their experiences with your product or service online.

Visions of positive tweets filled with smiling faces, kind words and people holding handwritten signs that read, “#YourTaxis” must have danced in the social media team’s heads when the Victorian Taxi Association created the hashtag campaign.

If the goal was positive feedback, the campaign couldn’t have missed the mark more. It’s quickly becoming a social media nightmare.

The #YourTaxis hashtag campaign “was meant to promote a broader digital strategy in which the yourtaxis.com.au website helped to restore the ailing reputation of Victoria’s yellow cabs and rebuild trust as the industry fights back against Uber,” The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

YourTaxis is a website coordinated by the Victorian Taxi Association that houses all of Victoria’s taxi services, facts and history.

To read the full story, log in.
Become a Ragan Insider member to read this article and all other archived content.
Sign up today

Already a member? Log in here.
Learn more about Ragan Insider.