Companies Uber and Lyft have pioneered the crowd-sourced taxi service industry. Both companies are heavily funded and boast global presences. Since its founding in 2009, Uber has raised over $1.5 billion and is valued at over $17 billion. The slightly younger Lyft, founded in 2012, has been valued at $700 million.
In their successes, Uber and Lyft have started what has become one of the fiercest rivalries in the tech world. Uber drivers have been accused of running smear campaigns against their mustachioed competitor. In May 2013, Uber ran a recruitment campaign with mobile billboards calling for drivers to “shave the stach”.
Corporate egos aside, the two companies are after keen to engage loyal customers and entice new drivers to their brands. In this hyper competitive market, missing the mark on audience segmentation could be devastating. We decided to take a dive into the brands’ audiences to get an idea of the “Who” behind the brand–and see which brand was engaging in the most strategic way.
To begin the project, People Pattern ingested over 167,000 unique followers of Uber and Lyft. Pulling in data from across the social landscape, People Pattern collected posts from each of the individual followers, totaling nearly 26 million individual posts. The data was then used to make predictions about individual fans, and to inform the rollup analysis of the aggregate audience. Based on the data, we were able to find some interesting insights into how Uber and Lyft use digital media to connect and grow their audiences.
Uber has positioned itself as a sleek, sexy brand. From the crisp logo to its sophisticated look and feel, Uber caters to a mature, professional, crowd. Taking a look at the demographic data, we see that older millennials make up the majority of the brand’s clientele. The data skews more male than female, which makes us think back to the look and feel of the brand. Also interesting is the fact that roughly 25% of Uber’s customer base is above the age of 35.
The most common topics of conversation within this audience revolve around careers, sports, parties and design. Within the context of parties, folks are mentioning things like music, the weekend and seasons–perhaps referring to fall sports and games. When they talk about careers, this bunch uses words like “app”, “iPhone” and references @mashable as a source of pertinent information. Many Uber users discussed New York Fashion week and seem to be society types interested in design and philanthropy.
From the followers of Uber, we were able to identify the top influencers within Uber’s particular audience.
These folks are people with whom the followers of Uber are most connected–and who would be most able to quickly share information with others within the audience. The top influential advocates within this particular segment are established athletes and artists whose personal brands reflect of the kinds of people to whom Uber caters.
Lyft takes a different approach to attracting new business than its competitor. Under the tagline “Your friend with a car,” Lyft’s whimsical interface, en-route fistbumps and pink mustachioed cars is distinct from Uber’s branding. Much of the demographic information between Uber and Lyft are the same, with the most noticeable difference being in the discrepancy between male and female followers. Lyft appears to cater more towards a slightly younger, more female audience than its competitor.
Drilling beyond high level demographic information, we can see a much more important differences in Lyft’s audience. A brief glance at the word clusters and it is apparent that the words that people are using are more wholesome than the competitive topics–the most popular topic appears to be more sentimental. Words like “Happy”, “Awesome”, and “Beautiful” indicate the Lyft user tends to elicit more emotional responses. Along a similar vein, the third most popular topic revolved around religious affiliation, even calling out celebrity pastor Joel Osteen.
The top influencers within Lyft’s audience are underdog entrepreneurs, athletes and youtube sensation, ThatsS0Jack, reflecting the interests of more wholesome clientele than the competitive set.
With a deep understanding of the audience, brands are able to engage and respond to the desires of vocal individuals. The more detail a brand has in understanding the customer, the better positioned that brand will be when it comes to winning new fans and keeping past clients loyal, happy and active.
People Pattern Audience Insights helps brands to understand the nuances of their audiences and provides the tools to drill into exposing the intricacies of an audience on an individual level. Interested in learning more how audience intelligence could benefit your brand? Email us or request a demo below.
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