STA - Your Cougar Card Is Your Bus Pass
Target Audience: The target audience was Washington State University students. Enrolled students are given a student I.D. called a Cougar Card. The Cougar Card is also a bus pass, and can be used to ride STA without paying a fare at the farebox. But most students didn't realize their Cougar Card was also a bus pass, and ridership growth depended on them knowing.
Strategy Objective:Our small, scrappy communications team saw this as a great opportunity to stand out from the pack and make something memorable. Our goal was to be the high point of the orientation. We wanted students to see riding the bus as cool and fun. We thought students might leave the orientation audio on and navigate away to social media sites, etc. We needed to capture their attention and bring them back to watch our video. It turned out we had a funny song from a 90's STA commercial called "Way to Go, Spokane!". We opened our video with a section from that, then cut to motion graphics created by our team. The graphics were made using stock photos of humorous photos of college students mixed with information about how to use a Cougar Card as a bus pass.
Situation Challenge: Identifying the target audience was important — but equally important was recognizing how the audience would be watching. Because of COVID-19, the WSU student orientation would be virtual. Introductions and speeches would be recorded on laptops. Students were expected to watch the nearly four-hour-long orientation on screened devices. These types of virtual meetings usually run too long and are plagued by A/V problems. And they're boring. STA's time slot was in the middle of the orientation and we saw this as a chance to make something students would remember.
Results Impact: We intentionally gave the university the video at the last possible moment because we didn't want to leave any time for requests for changes or edits. We risked the all-or-nothing strategy, and it worked. The reaction was immediately positive and the video was generating buzz even before it aired. After the video played, we had people tell us it was the best part of the orientation and was much-talked-about afterwards. The university also asked to share with students outside of the orientation.
Why Submit: There are four reasons we are submitting this for award consideration: 1) It was made in-house with creativity and outside-the-box thinking to reach a target audience at a specific time. 2) The video was a bright spot in an otherwise challenging year. 3) It's likely our CEO will only become aware of the existence of this video if it wins something. 4) The only money we spent was $49 for royalty-free music.