What Uber can teach us about the importance of branding and growing up

For a company once lauded as a darling of tech disruption, Uber today is a brand fighting a reputational war on several fronts.

Making the news for all the wrong reasons, it is the subject of a licence appeal in London, violent protests on the streets of Bogota, and allegations of sexual harassment and an aggressively sexist company culture. Uber now faces increased competitive threat from ‘nicer’ rivals like Lyft – tipped to enter the UK market – if not prohibited by concerned regulators.

Like so many of its tech contemporaries, Uber has scaled globally almost exclusively on the basis of a disruptive business model and speed to market. It is of one of the many digitally native businesses defined by a ‘launch fast and iterate faster’ approach, exploiting digital network effects and peer-to-peer economics to pull the rug from beneath a variety of incumbent players. Read more 

David Parry is the chief operating officer of global branding agency Saffron