Community Transit's Print Media to Promote COVID-19 Safety Measures

Target Audience: - Current riders – to know safety measures and feel confidence in the safety of using our services - Former riders – to know safety measures before returning to riding and to instill confidence in the safety of returning to riding with us - Community – to influence safety perceptions and instill confidence in the responsiveness and safety of local transit services

Strategy Objective:- Convey the safety measures we put in place Inform riders about what has been done and how safety is being addressed. - Provide information on what riders can do to ride safely Educate riders on expectations and how they can help contribute to a safe trip while riding with us. - Add warmth to messaging about a difficult topic Keep riders engaged with an illustrated campaign that helps show information in a simple and engaging way. This also helped us avoid challenges we may have run into while trying to film during the pandemic. - Use simple language for easy understanding and translating Simplifying messaging to reach a broad audience that includes people with different language barriers and reading capabilities helps engage more people and clarify complicated information.

Situation Challenge: - We had important information to share about our safety measures We needed to inform riders about what was being done and what to expect when riding our services, including our expectations for passengers, such as required mask-wearing. - To address public concern about safety of using our services during pandemic We wanted to share the measures we had undertaken to prevent the spread of the virus and to protect the safety of both riders and employees. - To encourage ridership in the future We worked to encourage confidence in the safety of our services to help inform future transit decisions and trust in our brand.

Results Impact: - Increased confidence in safety of service We had 59,569 visits to our safety page during 2021. 53% of those visits were from new users to our site, showing an increase in people who may be new or returning to ridership and wanting to learn about safety. - Greater public awareness of safety measures; increased brand awareness in 2021, our safety landing page had 48,082 pageviews, 37,611 unique pageviews and the average time spent on the page was 1 minute 3 seconds. 36,604 of those pageviews were entrances onto our site, showing that the majority of that traffic came from direct links in our ad campaign.

Why Submit: Our safety campaign successfully invited engagement and action from our audience, educating riders about our requirements and expectations while maintaining a friendly and reassuring tone. Different illustrated scenes show the various services we offer, tailoring our messaging to different audiences and reminding people of the many ways we bring transit options to their communities. The illustrated style of this campaign successfully provided a flexible and creative approach amid production limitations caused by the pandemic, as social distancing made filming and photoshoots more challenging. It would be an honor for our team to receive an AdWheel Award in recognition of the thoughtful design and execution of this campaign amid a time of uncertainty and change.