BART's 50th Anniversary Birthday Party & Family Fun Festival

Target Audience: Our target audience: - General Public/Taxpayers - Riders - Community partners/advocacy groups - Title VI communities - Employees - Retirees - Elected Officials - Partner transit agencies

Strategy Objective:Our strategy was to leverage BART's golden anniversary to build on the BART brand. Our goal was to celebrate BART's 50 years of service by engaging the public, employees, retirees, elected officials and community partners by highlighting major events in BART's history and their importance of BART's role in the region. Finally, the event was designed to help drive up Saturday ridership, which had been increasing but started to decline. To achieve these goals, we laid out the following objectives: - 1500 attendees - $50K in sponsorships - Sell 75% of booth space - 150 Special Guest Reception attendees - 75 event day staff volunteers to create a fun experience for attendees - Stay on budget - Celebrate workforce, retirees, taxpayers, customers & partnerships - Celebrate ethnic diversity

Situation Challenge: Like with all transit agencies, the pandemic devastated BART ridership. In a normal year, 70% of our operating revenues come from riders. At one point early in the pandemic, ridership dropped to 6% of normal. As the pandemic continued, riders started to slowly return. But when we count on passengers for most of our funding, we knew we had to do something big to bring them back. That opportunity was our 50th Anniversary Party & Family Fun Festival. Two years into the pandemic, the world was itching to get out of their homes and back to a semblance of normalcy. The timing couldn't be more ideal for an outdoor event. We set out to throw a big public party–one filled with food, fun, prizes, music and more–all designed to build ridership and reinforce BART's vital regional role & brand.

Results Impact: "Epic!" That's the word that would stand out if you were to use a word cloud to describe how the thousands of people who attended our 50th anniversary party said they felt about the celebration. Sure, we put in 11 months of planning, held hundreds of hours of meetings, and utilized more than 300 employees to prep and staff the event, but when the big day came, all of us were taken aback by the turnout and the sheer excitement from those who attended our big birthday bash! As a result, we achieved: - 4000+ attendees (3x goal) - $196K in sponsorships (4x goal) - 8,000 (6%) increase in Saturday riders in month after event vs month before - 250 Elected Officials & Guest at Special Reception (100 more than goal) - $12K merch sales (3x goal) - Oversold booths (added more) - Under budget

Why Submit: The resounding success of the event wasn't just a win for BART, it was a huge win for the Bay Area. It reinvigorated employees, retirees, elected officials, riders and even the media. To this day, people are still talking about how "epic" this event was. In fact, we are now getting calls from other public agencies asking, "how did you do it?" We are submitting this for an AdWheel award because this event is a template for success, which we would love to share with all our transit friends who face the same struggles as we do.