Using Taxi Drivers to Spread the Word of TED

May 3, 2011 by Ryan Lum - 5 comments

TED is a non-profit organization devoted to ideas worth spreading.Unfortunately, their presence wasn’t well known among common people in Latin America. TEDxBuenosAries called upon the best talkers in town, local taxi divers, to spread the word of this organization.

The drivers were invited to the conference and, after listening to 6 hours of inspiring ideas from TED’s guest speakers, were sent back to work where they shared what the learned with passengers. The medium of this campaign works so beautifully because individuals who use the taxi service tend to be the target market that TED is trying to reach.

This is a wonderful campaign that really emphasizes the idea of word-of-mouth marketing. Word of mouth refers to oral communication and the passing of information from person to person. Storytelling is the oldest form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others of something, whether a real event or something made up. To find out more about word-of-mouth marketing, see the wikipedia article.

Word-of-mouth marketing is very effective because it has a tendency to spread virally and gets higher involvement and ROI than other forms of marketing.

TED

[via PSFK]