A couple of days go, Uber French executives got arrested, on the ground of illegal taxi practices. Two days before, François Hollande declared he wanted Uberpop dissolved (sic). Everything happens as if Uber had no chance in France: the local biggest taxi company has some kind of monopoly and pressures the government to enforce the status quo.
The thing is, in only in couple of days, the advertising for Uber couldn't be better. The government and the French taxi lobby can threaten anybody they want. The truth is, even if they don't realize it, they already lost. Here is why:
1- Zillion Mentions (Twitter)
On June 30, the potential reach of tweets dealing with Uberpop was more than 10 million people (source: tweetchup)! That's more than 1/6 of French population. In one day. For free. Check this map and compare the mentions regarding Uberpop: the visibility that Uber managed to gain in a couple of days is huge. Now the questions is whether of not this visibility was positive or not. Any clue ?
Mentions of "Uberpop" on June 30 - Source : http://tweetchup.com/
2- Obvious Reasons (Facebook)
Meet Maxime Coulon. Judging by his profile pics, he is hardly 18 years old. A couple of weeks ago he published a rather harsh article, explaining to what extent he was satisfied to see taxis in such a state of despair. The levels of service, he says, had been so poor over the past years, that this situation, according to him, is very much deserved. The article strongly promotes Uber service. It doesn't support any comparison with the mediocre cab services. This post was shared more than 250k times. This is a definitive message, condemning a whole industry, the way it operates, and how it treats customers.
3- Strong emotions (Instagram)
Once you have told people about a service they didn't know (visibility), and convinced them it was better than the service they used to buy (reasons), then it is time to be even more convincing and show them how bad the people they relied on to go from point A to point B can behave. In that case, pictures can do a great job. Check this pic from Courtney love. It is pretty explicit.
Mentions > reasons > emotions. Uber couldn't set up a better social media campaign in so little time, and meanwhile, convince the whole planet that regardless of what old corporations and government think, and how much they push for status quo, they will eventually fail massively.