Move Your City

Target Audience: The target audience for RTD's Move Your City campaign included potential applicants and new hires for positions with RTD as well as current internal employees. Positions of most urgency were bus and rail operators (drivers), mechanics, and body shop technicians. The broad-based campaign was developed to attract candidates with similar skills and positions who wanted to make a move to a better opportunity and those wanting to pursue a career in these fields, who could be trained on the necessary skills.

Strategy Objective:The strategy was to evolve the narrative behind RTD jobs to make them more attractive and inviting, to set RTD apart in a competitive marketplace unlike any before. Current drivers indicated that one of the main reasons people work here is because they are tied to the agency mission of "moving people"—something larger than themselves. Based on this rallying cry, the campaign created instant ownership and buy in for applicants to be an integral part of something—helping to "Move Your City"(not the city) physically from place to place, while also helping the region recover. The campaign, led by twin :15 videos of "a day in the life" of both drivers and body shop techs, showed the positions from the workers' perspective, employing quick, modern cuts to simulate what the jobs are actually like

Situation Challenge: In 2021, RTD was and today still is an agency in transition. At the end of 2020, we laid off and hired back operators and mechanics out of pandemic-related necessities and correspondingly low service levels, a decrease in demand, capacity restrictions, budget cuts, and other factors. However, as we, like many other industries, went to hire back employees in early 2021, all companies were and are still are struggling to fill vacancies. At the outset, we needed to hire more than 400 operators, mechanics, and body shop technicians to restore service gradually as the pandemic evolved. Based on these factors, we determined the need to introduce new marketing strategies by changing the narrative about why we were hiring and reinforcing that RTD offers stable and rewarding careers.

Results Impact: Since the campaign launched in April 2021, it has had an impact on hiring and has begun to transform the narrative around RTD careers. Our multichannel marketing has included dedicated webpages, resulting in 51,000 sessions to the careers, operators, and mechanics pages with an average time spent of 1:51 per page. Vehicle exteriors have garnered 170 million impressions. Click thru rates for targeted and broad-based digital ads averaged .15%, with ads on targeted lifestyle, entertainment, news, Spotify and Pandora, achieving a CTR of .23%. YouTube videos drew 600,000 impressions and more than 100,000 click thrus. LinkedIn posts yielded 30,000 impressions and a 2.4% engagement rate, while paid Facebook campaigns achieved a reach of 4,075, with 1,878 post engagements, and 1,699 video plays.

Why Submit: Since inception, Move Your City has begun to transform RTD's career narrative. At present, we are balancing both hiring and losing current employees to competitive jobs. However, we are seeing more qualified applicants, more follow through, and less fall out in the application process. In addition, the campaign's high engagement and bounce rate affirmed that we, like most others, need to reevaluate our operations, pay structure, benefits, and what's most important to employees right now, something currently under consideration. As a result, we've also brought back both signing and referral bonuses, advertised through this program, which have created an infusion of new applicants, while showing value to existing employees.