Come on baby,
drive my car.
Media Strategy | Thought Leadership | Partnerships
Data Story Mining | Crisis Communication | Editorial Advisory & Management
Whether you’ve used one or seen one, the chances are you know what GoGet is and what it does.
GoGet has become synonymous with car sharing in Australia, just as ‘Google’ has become analogous for ‘search engine’.
Andiron has been GoGet’s Communications partner for seven years (and counting). The continued success of GoGet, demonstrated by a 900 percent increase in membership since we started working together, is a testament to the movement making methodology.
Where it started
Back in 2014 when Andiron jumped in the communications driver seat, GoGet had already been in business for 17 years. It had grown from one vision, two blokes and three vehicles as ‘Newtown CarShare’ to rebranding as GoGet and being at the forefront of the car sharing revolution. They had 12,000 members and less than 450 vehicles.
GoGet were all about making life easier. As they said, ‘No more worrying about insurance, maintenance, cleaning or even the price of fuel!’ Lots of people wanted to drive their cars and leave the worry behind.
Finding focus
Following on from their startup success, GoGet had reached a fork in the road. A deepening awareness of problems facing the environment, the need to create sustainable communities, and how we could help solve the savage congestion in our metropolitan areas, were becoming just as important as the convenience factor, for both GoGet and their members.
“The way we are using transport is changing
— the love affair with the car is coming to an end.”
Lisa McLean - CEO of urban advocacy group Open Cities
GoGet needed advice about the most strategic long-term direction to take the business. With so many important issues at play, a sense of focus was imperative to unite the brand, keep moving forward and maintain relevance.
We took the first bold steps by shifting the narrative of the external and internal communications, shaping both the outbound and inbound media management, and developing and supporting partnerships with government and NGOs.
One of the key priorities of our engagement was to position GoGet as a leader in the shared mobility space. We wanted to move the needle away from the perception of GoGet as a private company to a truer, more subtle approach of a community-based organisation that while commercial, delivers vast benefits for the public.
Beyond ‘cheaper’
Partnering with experts in traffic engineering we learned about what it is that makes car share so effective for the public benefit and set about communicating this research. As part of this in-depth scrutiny, we discovered that long-held assumptions around public transport were quite simply wrong. Our data upended conventional thinking.
The Andiron approach has always been to stretch boundaries and with this landmark research, we firmly positioned GoGet and car share as a serious force in the shared mobility and public transport space. With a strong reason to have a seat at the table in the debate on how our cities are shaped, GoGet became a voice to be heard.
We amplified the research learnings through different media channels, strategic NGO partnerships and government engagement. This culminated in a campaign event luncheon where we hosted a diverse list of contributors and high-profile stakeholders with interests in shared public transport.
These findings and our 360-degree approach to their promotion resulted in the establishment of critical editorial guidelines and management that have further supported GoGet’s growth.
Developing an overall program that aligned the ethos around car share, with commercial imperatives of business growth has always been the goal. Growing both membership signup and partner opportunities, as well as growth in developer and fleet management opportunities has seen GoGet’s expansion continue.
Building on GoGet’s reputation as an established advocate for shared transportation, we’ve published the first GoGet & Open Cities Congestion white paper titled Remode, Reprice, Reshape: The keys to killing congestion. OpenCities is a unique collaboration of private sector, public sector and academia focused on moving Australia forward into a sustainable future. It now boasts almost 50 members and has had an important impact on major policy conversations around congestion, development, data use and water.
Andiron was instrumental in the creation and promotion of Australia’s leading next generation infrastructure advocacy and research group through identifying and recruiting key organisations and rallying/aligning them through communications in the media on hot button, high profile social issues that bear on the lives of millions of Australians.
The Road Ahead
The Andiron and GoGet relationship, forged over seven years, has extended way beyond our initial media strategy.
As GoGet has matured as a business, so has the provision of solutions Andiron provides.
Research is one of the foundational pillars of the GoGet growth strategy. Our Data Story Mining capabilities turn information into knowledge, which in turn we use to build our Partnerships.
GoGet has broadened its reach to regional parts of Australia, launching in Orange, building a relationship with government and shared transportation advocacy, supported and endorsed by government.
And even when things don’t go right, they don’t go wrong either. Our Crisis Communication plan enables fact-based communications that are aligned with brand perception and stakeholder expectations in any challenging situation. The evolution of scope is a testament to the mature and national nature of this pioneering carshare brand.
Parking it here
Today, over 25% of all City of Sydney households are GoGet members and over 17% of City of Melbourne are members. Andiron has been instrumental in moving GoGet to the centre of the MAAS (Mobility as a Service) movement both nationally and globally and securing the company a place at the table in government and industry conversations on development, transport, affordability and liveability.
We have done this, in part, through management of all incoming and outgoing media communications and proactive identification of ways in which GoGet can and should play key leadership roles in central issues facing our communities. One recent example was the development of a multi-pronged thought leadership campaign that engaged key stakeholders across government and industry through high-touch events, ongoing interactive digital campaigns, including the creation and deployment of a video game to drive home key messages and spur interactivity, and high quality earned media through the ABC and Fairfax.
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