The World's Most Expensive Taxi Journey

In early 2011, Johno Ellison, Leigh Purnell and Paul Archer left Covent Garden, London and launched their 'It's on the Meter' challenge with the aim of raising £20,000 for the Red Cross, together with attempting to break the world record for the most expensive cab journey. In late 2011 when the funds were running low, GetTaxi became the main sponsors of the boys' feat and its support helped the crew to complete their round-the-world trip.

Upon arrival back to the UK in May 2012, Johno Ellison, Leigh Purnell and Paul Archer were to learn of the Guinness World Records that they had broken and we were to put Get Taxi’s involvement at the heart of the boy’s accomplishments. We were briefed by M & C Saatchi to leverage broadcast coverage for GetTaxi’s sponsorship of the completion of the ‘It’s On the Meter’ challenge across Radio, TV and Online platforms. We were to invite and encourage key media attendance to attend a photo call / video shoot in Covent Garden, where it all began.

The footage was then distributed to UK and international TV broadcasters at an embargoed press briefing a day before the launch. There was room for 5 international broadcasters and we secured CNN, China’s CCTV, the USA’s NBC, in addition to Reuters and APTN, the agencies which distribute leading stories to the world’s TV and online newsrooms. One-on-one interviews were also arranged for each with the architect, Renzo Piano, and developer, Irvine Sellar.

With a total of 157 items of coverage, the results featured with the likes of Reuters, ITV, BBC Points West, NTV, the Sun, Euro News, BBC World TV, BBC Look North and Sky News Sunrise. In addition, the radio sell in was extremely successful featuring amongst others interviews with LBC, Sky News Radio and numerous BBCs covering the story.

We also captured video content on the morning of the media event and we were able to edit and package up a short news feature that was available to view by early afternoon. Following client approval, we were able to turn this content around quickly and efficiently package up the content for sell in from Friday afternoon and going into the weekend / early into the following week.

The video outreach enabled the campaign coverage to be prolonged past the initial media event and stand out coverage was secured on the likes of the Daily Mail, ITN, The Sun Online and The Evening Standard online to name just a few.