On Sunday, the mayor of Paris is organizing a “citizen vote” to decide whether or not to ban self-service electric scooters in the capital. To influence the vote, the scooter operators have embarked on a major lobbying plan.
“For or against self-service scooters in Paris?” this is the question that Parisians are called upon to answer on Sunday April 2 in certain polling stations in the capital. A local referendum wanted by the socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, on the 15,000 self-service scooters in the capital, which has been the subject of a merciless battle and sometimes borderline lobbying on the part of the big scooter operators who have a lot to lose.
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Since Anne Hidalgo announced the holding of this citizens’ vote last January, the three big names in scooters in Paris, the American Lime, the German Tier and the Franco-Dutch Dott have joined forces to thwart the predictions that see them as losers in this bizarre referendum. Since January, their target is 18-35 year olds who would represent 70% of their clientele. The three operators have been financing, for a month and a half, a vast communication campaign on Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram on the theme: “Don’t let the boomers decide for you”. A “trottinonsmieux.com” website has been launched, targeted emails are sent, elements of language to communicate on the networks are used behind the hashtag #SauveTaTrott.
Call for influencers
At the end of February, Lime traded ten free minutes for proof of voter registration. At the beginning of the last week of March, while the National Assembly began to talk about the regulation of influencers, a dozen tiktokeurs and Instagrammers, some of whom are followed by more than a million subscribers, post at the same time for messages like this: “Scooters are the most romantic thing. In a week, friends, you have to go vote to save scooters. Go vote so that I continue to fish”. Or : “Disaster alert! I’m going to explain how you’re going to help me. Paris City Hall wants to ban self-service electric scooters throughout the capital, it’s not cool. Electric scooters are really not expensive. The prices are really really very attractive.”
“We would have bought a page from a newspaper, it would have been the same thing.”
Maggy Gerbeaux, Director of Public Affairs at Dottat franceinfo
Tuesday, March 28, all these influencers ended up mentioning under their videos “paid partnership” because obviously the three scooter operators are behind this flash campaign, which Maggy Gerbeaux fully assumes. The Director of Public Affairs at Dott recalls that the ballot takes place on a marathon day in only 21 polling places, without electronic voting or proxy: “Social networks, Instagram, Tik Tok, for me, it’s not aggression, it’s communication. Today, that’s how we communicate. In fact, it’s not there’s nothing hidden, it’s sponsored content, we have the right to do so. We just made a communication that speaks to the people who use our scooters.”
“We are on the verge of buying votes”
“There is a gray area, in the use that we can make of these influencers or in any case of this form of lobbying with the youngest. And me, that questions me”, reacts David Belliard, the mobility assistant at the City of Paris. And enough to irritate a little more the one who is at the origin of the vote, the operators also announce a free scooter day to vote on Sunday. “We are on the verge of buying votes”says the elected environmentalist: “There, we see that when we are dealing with very strong special interests, with a lot of money, this money is massively used to buy votes. So we can clearly see that there is a gray area “. This unprecedented referendum in Paris is however supervised by an independent control commission.
The scooter operators did not remain passive in the face of this vote. Because if the vote “against” wins, Lime, Dott and Tier should remove from the streets its 15,000 scooters used each month by 400,000 users. The vote “against” would also threaten 800 jobs in Paris alone, say the operators. Erwann Le Page is director of public affairs at Tier, which counted four million journeys last year in Paris: “Today, we want to structure our achievements on the 600 cities in which we are. Paris has a leadership on this, it is a symbolic city. It would be a decision rather against the current. We are in Lyon, London, Rome , Madrid, Washington which has just increased its fleet of scooters. Now the current is on. Cities are not turning back.” Behind the apparent calm, it is however the uncertainty that reigns among these three startups which are not accustomed to leaving their interests in the hands of chance. For them, the hunt for votes will go on until the last moment.