Uber Delivers More Than Sweets With Its Ice Cream Ploy

Tactics and strategy. Uber, the phone based taxi service, has, for the third year in a row, chosen a summer Friday afternoon on which to deliver ice cream to those who want it. This year, however, it was available in 144 cities around the world via Twitter and Instagram.

For a business as famous for the fights it has picked with municipal authorities and those who earn a living driving cabs the traditional way, this is a cutesy public relations ploy. Who doesnt like ice cream on a hot summer afternoon? And it is cloaked, ostensibly, in a public service-y blaze of publicity.

But there is a cold business calculation involved as well. This disarming event is meant to curry favor with potential customers and regulators - and to serve notice to potential acquirers intensely interested in ecommerce delivery capabilities that Uber can be viewed from many perspectives, almost all of them profitable. JL

Jeff Stone reports in International Business Times:

 “They are leveraging their existing business model to raise brand awareness and to make money as well. They are also crossing from one business model into another, that of home delivery."
Uber, in a marketing move greeted with a child-like glee by the sweaty masses, announced that customers beat July heat by ordering an ice cream with their ride through most of the afternoon Friday.
Uber Ice Cream – which the company hopes customers follow by using the #UberIceCream on Twitter and Instagram – available in 144 cities around the world.
“We wanted to create an experience with an application people might not have been able to use before,” Uber Phoenix General Manager Steve Thompson told the Phoenix Business Journal. “We want to show the power of technology.”
The ice cream order was charged to users’ Uber account, to request a specific kind of ice cream in the app before their ride arrives. In a bulletin announcing Uber Ice Cream the startup made it clear that “Demand will be very high and availability limited.”
For all the generosity points Uber is earning by selling ice cream (two days before National Ice Cream Day, no less) business analysts have already reminded the public that the offering is a shrewd marketing move, raising awareness both among customers and potential buyers.
 “They are leveraging their existing business model to raise brand awareness and to make money as well,” explained the technology blog Loop In Sight. “They are also crossing from one business model into another, that of home delivery. Hey Amazon/Google: If you buy Uber, you also get an instant, stealth, world-wide home delivery fleet.”