On 5th December 2017 we launched the new electric London black cab. A UK icon going green and looking to be exported all around the world at a time when every city on the planet is asking serious emissions questions, would, we believed, interest the correspondents of the foreign TV stations based in the capital as well as local London TV. We were not disappointed.
We attracted 13 foreign crews to the launch event at symbolic Battersea Power Station, setting up each one to interview the CEO of the cab manufacturer, the London EV Company. We also got each crew out filming for an hour in the back of the new cabs, being driven around the capital’s streets by early-adopting London cabbies, each one completely sold on the green revolution and very happy to say so on camera.
The TV correspondents from leading TV stations in Germany, France, China, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Mexico and Canada all came, each one generating packages that ran on their breakfast and prime-time news programmes back home. The Canadians surpassed everyone by twice going live into their breakfast news whilst driving past Big Ben, filming it through the panoramic roof of the new cab.
Meanwhile the London offices of leading channels in India and Brazil used the B-Roll footage we filmed and edited on launch day, while the three global TV agencies – Reuters, APTN and AFP – each filmed packages and distributed them to their hundreds of TV station and website clients all around the world.
All this was on top of the day-long BBC and ITV coverage in London and the Midlands, where the new cabs are being manufactured, significant UK radio coverage and, the cream on the UK cake, a huge feature on BBC1’s The One Show after the new cab delivered US actor Christian Slater live to the TV studio door.
“Awesome!” said David Ollier, Head of Communications at the London EV Company.