Tap a Taxi
We helped launch Ireland's first driver co-op taxi app from a standing start, reaching over 1 million people and taking its drivers' story to eight counties.
1M+
12,000+
The Challenge
Tap a Taxi is owned by the people driving it. What started as a WhatsApp group of taxi drivers became a co-op with well over a thousand driver-owners, one share and one vote each. What goes on the meter is what the passenger pays and what the driver gets.
For drivers, that’s an easy sell. Passengers were harder. They already had taxi apps on their phones, logged in with a card saved, and opened them out of habit. It was the same taxi. And the big international apps could outspend a driver co-op many times over.
The Brief
Get Tap a Taxi known from a standing start, with no social following, no ad accounts and no tracking in place. Give people a real reason to try it. Get the app onto phones in Dublin, then county by county.
Our Approach
The one thing no other taxi app could copy was who owned it, but passengers can’t see that when they book. So the job was to make it visible: real drivers, on camera, in their own words.
Before a camera came out we wrote the messaging: the positioning, three pillars, the tone of voice and one simple rule, always for something, never against someone. That work shaped the lines you’ll still see today: “The locals’ taxi app”, “Same taxi. Better choice.” and “A fair fare.”
We filmed the drivers regularly, starting with a day of interviews in their own taxis, the way you’d chat to someone from the back seat, and kept going back with the cameras as the co-op grew. Every interview was broken down line by line and cut into short clips with one idea each. One rule applied to every edit: if it feels like an ad, it’s wrong. If it feels like a person, it’s right.
We built Facebook, Instagram and TikTok from nothing and kept new driver stories coming. Facebook & Instagram ads went live in Dublin within a few weeks and rolled out county by county from there. Google Ads went after airport taxi searches, because someone with a flight to catch is ready to book.
Services Provided
Brand Messaging & Positioning
Social First Video Shoots
Social Media Management
Facebook & Instagram Ads
Google Ads Campaigns
Tracking & Reporting Dashboard
Results
Over 1 million people reached by the ads. Campaigns running across eight counties in under seven months.
Tap a Taxi’s own pages went from zero to over 12,000 followers across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, with almost a million views on the driver stories and posts. Between the ads and the pages, the drivers have been on Irish phones more than 8 million times.
The drivers were what people stopped for. In the first six months, all six of the ads people saw most were drivers telling their own stories, and one driver’s account of how it all started in a WhatsApp group reached half a million people on its own. On the social pages, the posts that travelled furthest were about a fair fare and a business the drivers own, the same ground the messaging set out before launch.
The drivers built the business. Our job was to make sure people could see who they were.
1M+
12,000+
