STA - City Line Construction Begins This Summer
Target Audience: The "City Line Construction Begins This Summer" video was made to kick off the start of construction along City Line, Spokane's first BRT line. The audience was 1) the greater Spokane community 2) businesses and residences along the route 3) current riders.
Strategy Objective:We wanted to make a flashy, modern video to showcase the high-tech features of the future City Line bus and stations, and to appeal to future users about the all-electric City Line. We needed to show that the construction would be worth it. Because the route was years off, we decided to make a video in the style of a ‘coming soon' movie trailer to create buzz. But this plan had some problems: no budget, no existing vehicle, station or in-service route, and, due to COVID, stakeholders were busy with more urgent issues. It seemed there was nothing to film. We took stock of what we did have: a 1-week deadline, a drone, stock footage of a signing ceremony, blueprints for an electric bus and station renderings. The resulting video cost $49 to create and was made entirely in-house at STA.
Situation Challenge: Disruptive construction along the future City Line route was beginning downtown and in neighborhoods that are very vocal and politically active. The new line wasn't going into service for over two years, but streets and sidewalks were already being disrupted by construction. The public needed to understand why. The intense pressure of first-year ridership performance also motivated the video. Beyond informing about construction, we also aimed to generate interest and excitement about the project that would appeal to potential transit customers.
Results Impact: Based on community feedback, this video has been the most popular video ever made by Spokane Transit. This year alone our team of four put out over 200 different pieces of video content, but this is the one everybody is still talking about. On social media, the distribution rate (a combination of baseline metrics) was over twice our average. Reactions to the video were up 540%, comments up 340% and shares up 390%. Members of our executive team were initially unhappy to see we'd spent tens of thousands of dollars on a one-minute video — so it was a lot of fun to break it to them that it actually cost less than fifty bucks.
Why Submit: We are submitting this video because it symbolizes what our small, scrappy team does best — work together, meet deadlines under pressure, typically spend less than $100 per project, and exceed expectations to make public transit easier and more convenient to use.