Hello fellow interns!! Berkeley has been an interesting market to launch U Car Share. The community is one of the most enviornmentally progressive in the country, yet the University of California is very afraid of corporations, so it has been tricky marketing to the students. I have had to come up with very creative methods to get our name visible to students. I guess one of the main obstacles that we face is the competition from Zip Car and City Car Share. The other obstacle, is educating people on what car sharing actually is. A lot of students come from out of state and from regions that do not have car sharing.
Last week I got creative on campus. It is summer break, but the campus is full of summer session students, researchers, and prospective students visiting. I punched holes in all of the color flyers and attached rubber bands to them. The flyers are made of recycled material and latex rubber bands are completely biodegradable, so I proceeded to hang flyers throughout the UC Berkeley campus on various poles, benches, bike racks, signs, light posts, etc. I even hung some on bicycles and telephones! I have also put flyers on Zip Cars, and City Car Share vehicles, and even handed flyers to people leaving vehicles. I have also around to all of the retail shops near the campus and handed flyers to managers of stores for employees and shoppers.
Thats just a little bit of what I am doing. I also find that sometimes explaining how I found car sharing helps.
Here is a little bit about my introduction to car sharing:
Car sharing really saved my life. When I first moved back home to San Francisco after finishing college, my father sold my car. This initially freaked me out. I was pretty dependent on my vehicle, but still very enviormentally conscious. SF was really expensive. Never in my life had I spent so much money on rent, so the decrease in expenses every month (gas and car payments) was quite a relief. After a few weeks the bus system was fairly easy to get around on, but was tricky when it came to grocery shopping, and going to Target. San Francisco has no Target!! The closest store is in the next city south of here, or all the way across the Bay Bridge in the East Bay. Taking transit to either of those places was over an hour, and very costly. One night I was out dancing and a friend offered me a ride in a vehicle that had some nifty City Car Share decals on the side. This was the very moment that I found out about a great thing - car sharing. Up until this point I had never heard about car sharing. Immediately after this experience I scoured the net looking for all sorts of information and found out that we have City Car Share and Zip Car in SF. The problem I saw with City Car Share was - this city is really expensive already, and they wanted a $300 deposit just to join!! Zip Car was offering a discount on membership, and they had an office right near my bus stop so I signed my name up. Zip Car was pretty cool to sign up with (they gave me a driving credit in the amount of my start up fee), except for after a year of membership they charged me a huge annual fee again, and this time no driving credit.
Last week I got creative on campus. It is summer break, but the campus is full of summer session students, researchers, and prospective students visiting. I punched holes in all of the color flyers and attached rubber bands to them. The flyers are made of recycled material and latex rubber bands are completely biodegradable, so I proceeded to hang flyers throughout the UC Berkeley campus on various poles, benches, bike racks, signs, light posts, etc. I even hung some on bicycles and telephones! I have also put flyers on Zip Cars, and City Car Share vehicles, and even handed flyers to people leaving vehicles. I have also around to all of the retail shops near the campus and handed flyers to managers of stores for employees and shoppers.
Thats just a little bit of what I am doing. I also find that sometimes explaining how I found car sharing helps.
Here is a little bit about my introduction to car sharing:
Car sharing really saved my life. When I first moved back home to San Francisco after finishing college, my father sold my car. This initially freaked me out. I was pretty dependent on my vehicle, but still very enviormentally conscious. SF was really expensive. Never in my life had I spent so much money on rent, so the decrease in expenses every month (gas and car payments) was quite a relief. After a few weeks the bus system was fairly easy to get around on, but was tricky when it came to grocery shopping, and going to Target. San Francisco has no Target!! The closest store is in the next city south of here, or all the way across the Bay Bridge in the East Bay. Taking transit to either of those places was over an hour, and very costly. One night I was out dancing and a friend offered me a ride in a vehicle that had some nifty City Car Share decals on the side. This was the very moment that I found out about a great thing - car sharing. Up until this point I had never heard about car sharing. Immediately after this experience I scoured the net looking for all sorts of information and found out that we have City Car Share and Zip Car in SF. The problem I saw with City Car Share was - this city is really expensive already, and they wanted a $300 deposit just to join!! Zip Car was offering a discount on membership, and they had an office right near my bus stop so I signed my name up. Zip Car was pretty cool to sign up with (they gave me a driving credit in the amount of my start up fee), except for after a year of membership they charged me a huge annual fee again, and this time no driving credit.
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