DART Gen Z Ridership Campaign

Target Audience: - Key Demo: Ages 18 to 29, live and/or work downtown. This includes the East Village and the areas west of downtown along Route 60. - Perceptions: Open to public transit, value sustainability and inclusivity. May have some anxiety about that first ride. - Behaviors: Not yet cemented, especially as routines reset with return to workplace initiatives.

Strategy Objective:Goals: - Increase awareness and willingness to ride the bus or try the bus for the first time. - Improve perceptions of the bus within this demo. - Deploy grassroots initiative to increase brand engagement amongst young urban audience who are more prone to ride the bus. Our campaign strategy had an urban focus, pairing grassroots tactics with traditional and digital media. Phase 1 - Digital and social media ads - 4-part TikTok collab with Catch Des Moines - DART "painted the town" with billboards, sidewalk stencils, posters, bus shelter ads & stickers - Event activation for the 80/35 music festival Phase 2 - Event activation at back-to-school events for Drake University - Digital ads directing people to a landing page with rider testimonials - Facebook/Instagram, Twitter & Snapchat

Situation Challenge: With an enterprise goal of returning to pre-COVID ridership, our team knew we had to get creative to move the needle. Through research and guidance from our advertising agency, we set our sights on Gen Z who make up 40% of all consumers. - To appeal to our audience, we took a calculated risk and intentionally did not use imagery of buses in this campaign. There are three cornerstones to effectively reaching Gen Zers the campaign is built on: Positive attitude/messaging, evoking a feeling of what it is like to ride and providing a warm welcome to discover the low-key luxury of riding the bus. - Headlines for the campaign include: o the bus is for all of us. o good things come to those who ride. o to ride is human. to ride, divine. o ride off into the sunset or sunrise.

Results Impact: Phase 1 The campaign kicked off June 1 and ran through mid-July. Paid, traditional advertising garnered 747,492 impressions through social media targeting and digital billboards. DART partnered with Catch DSM and a popular local actor to produce four Tik Toks to get people acquainted with riding. The series ran Aug. 1 – Sept. 11, 2021. It generated 757,412 impressions and 2,877 clicks resulting in a 0.38% CTR while reaching 134,368 individuals. Phase 2 Flighted Sept. 5 – Nov. 30, Phase two recorded 1,200,000 impressions across Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and digital ads. During this phase, 5,866 total URL engagements (Clicks to website, Sipe Ups, Ad Clicks) were recorded across all channels.

Why Submit: This headline forward campaign is simple, yet impactful. The campaign translates across all forms of traditional and non-traditional media. DART successfully leveraged the "summer season" for the campaign launch. Staff attended dozens of events distributing stickers & painted the town with posters. We interacted with hundreds of people at the 80/35 Music Festival with our branded cooling bus & later in the summer welcome Drake students back with red carpet treatment. Rounding out the summer, staff greeted more than 200,000 Iowa State Fair riders wearing branded baseball caps. Phase 3 is coming this spring and tactics include coasters in downtown bars, expanding our reach to 3 additional universities & more. This is a campaign where the headlines says it all, the bus is for all of us.