Metro - Your Way to Go

Target Audience: The target audience for this entry was broadly anyone in our market area who is looking for an alternative to driving. Specifically, we wanted to highlight the many service improvements Metro has made in the past 3 years after passing a sales tax levy. Post-COVID in the era of WFH and hybrid arrangements, we also wanted to suggest many other ways you can go Metro besides commuting to work, such as shopping, local sporting events, and socializing. Finally, because we are trying to attract new audiences to our service, we used a local social media influencer with a significant local following as our on-camera talent and developed a script that was more fun and approachable to appeal to this audience.

Strategy Objective:The objective of this entry was to increase awareness of our new services and boost ridership by using a local social media influencer as our on-camera talent. Her 30,000+ local followers would hopefully also boost our following and engagement in getting this message out. We chose video because research has shown that video in social posts increase views, likes, and followers. By creating a long-form video (4 minutes) with deliberate transitions, we could also produce shorter, more focused cuts suitable for posts on Facebook, X, and Instagram. thereby increasing its reach and effectiveness.

Situation Challenge: The situation that necessitated this entry was two-fold: promote many service improvements made possible by the passage of a sales tax levy and help promote ridership for uses beyond work trips. Since 2020, Metro has implemented 24-hour service on 7 routes and paratransit, expanded span and frequency on all routes, increased weekend service, added free wi-fi and charging ports to all buses, built a major transit center for transfer connections, launched 7 new crosstown routes for better connectivity, implemented contact-less fare payment, reduced fares on many routes, launched Cincinnati's first on-demand transit service, and began planning for Bus Rapid Transit. Adoption of these new services and ridership is up, but we wanted to boost the increases even more.

Results Impact: The results of this video exceeded expectations. YTD, post-pandemic ridership recovery is outpacing national averages. Our current fixed-route ridership is at 12 million trips. Last year, we experienced a 34% increase in fixed-route ridership. And our on-demand service MetroNow!, launched in 2023, has experienced a 115% increase in ridership this year. As for social media, our LiinkedIn engagement increased 11%, Facebook increased 9% and Instragram increased 4%. Finally, in a recent ridership survey, almost 30% of respondents indicated they have become riders in the past 2 years thanks to the many service improvements Metro has made, indicating not only high awareness but high adoption as well.

Why Submit: We submitted this entry to demonstrate that a well-produced video can present a lot of complex information in a short amount of time in an exciting and entertaining way that is more easily understood by the audience. Some of the factors that contributed to its success include use of a local social media influencer as on-camera talent, shooting on location with real people and buses, using innovative editing and post-production (graphics, music, etc.) to enhance the look and feel of the video, and building in specific transition spaces so the longer video could be re-cut into smaller segments for other uses. It should win an AdWheel Award because it shows an effective use of media that can be adopted by any system with similar success.