Behind the Scenes – Get Ready For Summer Pass Video

Target Audience: The target audiences for this campaign were youth aged 6-18 and their parents or guardians.

Strategy Objective:The plan to make a kickoff video was made late and we hadn't budgeted for it. We would need to work with what we had. There were 5 designs, each featuring an animal doing something silly like playing guitar or wearing sunglasses. We took these characters and more, then added simple motion effects, fun backgrounds and royalty-free images of some cute kids. We raided a treasure trove of old STA television ads from the 1980's, and used one showing kids running to board an STA bus. But something was still missing… We decided to go over the top and add dancing raccoons, cats and squirrels. We purchased royalty-free videos of CGI dancing animals and switched out the background for an STA theme. The final product is a fun and unique way of promoting a new program

Situation Challenge: In 2021 STA began offering free youth bus passes valid throughout the agency's 248 square mile, seven-city service area through a program called Summer Pass. The passes could be picked up at any local library and were valid from June to September. Inside our agency, there was a lot of excitement and pride in giving out thousands of free bus passes to local youth. We had five different bus passes designed with different animals. We wanted to start promoting the programs, but the passes weren't available yet. So we decided to do a video to kick things off. It needed to be memorable and funny – the kind of thing kids or maybe their parents would share with each other and their friends.

Results Impact: The video had over 4,000% more views than our other videos that month and 26 times the positive reactions. It also proved highly shareable — over 520% more than our average. Comments were up 600%. Most importantly, the number of Summer Passes given out to local youth ended up surpassing our goals and expectations. We're planning the 2022 campaign, and the crazy animal theme will definitely be back by popular demand.

Why Submit: We are submitting this video for consideration because it's the kind of thing our small team does best — pull together a crazy idea on a low budget, and make something creative that fits our marketing goals. We're very proud to have supported the Summer Pass program with creative content that created buzz and excitement. For us, the payoff has been seeing local kids on buses and at STA Plaza showing their Summer Passes and the crazy animals on them to each other.