Concur Hopes Its Taxi Ads Will Attract Business Travelers and Their CFOs

New York City taxicabs carry advertisements for everything from Broadway shows to upcoming movies, fashion labels, and apartment-hunting apps.

A travel and expense management technology company hardly seems to fit in with that crowd, but for Concur, the placement was perfect for reaching a critical mass of financial decision-makers.

Concur’s taxi toppers in New York as well as Chicago are part of a broad, multi-country effort that includes print ads in magazines and newspapers including Forbes and The Wall Street Journal; radio spots; digital advertising and billboards in London.

Jessica Shapiro, Concur’s vice president of corporate marketing, said the company had three goals: raise awareness for the brand, show how the provider can take care of travel and expense needs for customers, and drive demand.

“It was important to us to not just drive advertising that caught people’s attention and then they might look away, but that we really could tell the deeper story of how Concur solves problems for these modern financial decision makers who are looking to help the bottom line of the company,” Shapiro said.

While Concur has done ad campaigns in the past, the current iteration is designed to be more fully integrated into all of its content — so the website will feature guest blogs from chief financial officers explaining the value of the service, or research that echoes the points in the ads.

“We’re all pointing in the same direction telling the same story,” Shapiro said.

The main target for that story is a CFO, comptroller or vice president of finance, but marketers at Concur are hoping consumers will also get an eyeful.

“We think about the campaign targeting anyone who is making or influencing the buying decision, as well as the end user — and there are lots of people in that mix,” Shapiro said.

The campaign started in February, and the company said it is pleased by the reaction so far. By mid-May, Shapiro said, direct traffic to Concur.com had increased 32 percent year-over-year, and search inquiries were up 23 percent.

This summer, the company is laughing a new phase of the campaign targeted to travel managers. That group holds special interest to Concur, which offers a travel booking tool called TripLink. Like the current approach, Shapiro said the travel-centric push will be more integrated and incorporate multiple angles.

“We always worked very hard to speak to that travel manager audience in a unique way,” Shapiro said.