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Literally mobile marketing? It’s a possibility when attractive demographics are self-selecting to travel in the captive environment of a bus.
Hundreds of thousands of people are planning to attend the Women’s March on Washington following the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump. About 11,000 of them are traveling to DC via a new ride-sharing service called Skedaddle.
Skedaddle is a ride-sharing charter bus company that groups 10 or more riders together for cross-city commutes, and is looking like a go-to for prospective marchers traveling in from neighboring cities like New York and Philadelphia.
With young people likely comprising the bulk of its usership (it started out ferrying millenials to music festivals), Skedaddle could find itself an integral part of the summer leisure circuit. Of course for marketers, the service could help attract these young customers to the tentpole event — as well as providing an opportunity to message them, before, during and after their trip.
What’s more, Skedaddle co-founder and CEO Adam Nestler sees the service as a potential means to move goods as well as people from city to city, an obvious boon to retailers and product marketers.
But perhaps the most resonant aspect of Skedaddle for marketers is its conscious creation of a community. Like the Hampton Jitney and its ancillary connection to wealthy commuters on their way to and from resorts and holiday homes in Hamptons every summer, Skedaddle is yet another opportunity for affluent millennials to connect and build experiences around road trips. The added space of a charter bus allows for all kinds of social interaction and networking beyond the sideways conversations a couple of people have in the back of an Uber.
This isn’t even getting started on the data potential. Marketers stand to glean insights into not only who is booking trips and planning routes in the app, but who they are riding with, how often they are using the service, whether or not they are booking as a group or alone, when they are booking — and the business or leisure interests driving their travel.
It’s yet another space in which digital marketers can experiment and innovate.
