Stay Healthy, Stay Informed: Rapid Response Communications in the time of COVID-19
Target Audience: The target audience for RTD's Stay Healthy, Stay Informed shoestring campaign included the entire RTD service area and the communities impacted by pandemic-related service modifications and associated safety requirements. RTD placed strategic focus on reaching riders, our own employees, and the communities we serve who were/are affected by the rapid advance of the novel coronavirus. The pandemic resulted in a complete shutdown of the greater Denver metro area in mid-March 2020, followed by various phases of loosening and tightening restrictions, based on the virus' impact, which resulted in ongoing communications from March-December 2020.
Strategy Objective:To reach a remote audience, essential workers riding our system, and the community at large, and to communicate safety protocols and ongoing service, we leveraged RTD digital channels including website, social media, and email, partner-based, no-cost PSAs, ongoing public relations, outreach, signage and announcements on our vehicles and in facilities, to deliver immediate details to keep our communities safe and informed. Communications included changing service options, fare suspension, rear-door boarding, new safety protocols, public health guidelines, mask requirements, recognition of RTD front-line workers, communication to the ADA community about vital grocery delivery services, outreach to homelessness advocacy groups, and our first virtual, interactive service change meetings.
Situation Challenge: In early 2020, the coronavirus sent the world, and the metro Denver area, into a tailspin. With the situation rapidly becoming dire, people's entire lives were changed forever in an instant. Illness, loss of jobs, housing, remote work, distance learning, safety concerns, and public health requirements including masks and social distancing, had a dramatic impact on public transit. From the initial COVID-19 shutdown in March 2020, RTD ridership plummeted more than 60 percent. With declining ridership, rapidly changing information, and an inability to communicate via standard methods due to timing and access, our challenge was to create a safe, effective, and efficient way to communicate the constantly evolving details that impacted public health and safety in and around our transit system.
Results Impact: RTD's COVID-19 webpage saw more than 89,000 visits. Our dedicated service change webpage and social posts had 200,000 visits and impressions. Our Everyday Heroes social campaign, profiling front-line employees, garnered 143,555 impressions. Our Mask-up social campaign received 113,000 impressions. We designed and installed more than 10,000 vehicle and facility decals about service changes, masks, social distancing, fare suspension, rear-door boarding, and public health guidelines often in days. PSAs reached 605,000 listeners. We delivered groceries to more than 700 AAR customers on our Access-a-Ride fleet (saving $48,000 in operating costs). Ongoing PR and media resulted in 63 news stories, 30 press releases, 497 media inquiries, and over 1 million digital impressions.
Why Submit: RTD's entry should win in this category because it demonstrates creativity, resilience, complexity, and collaboration in effectively communicating with myriad audiences throughout changing aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. From public health notifications to service change meetings to daily internal employee updates, we responded to the internal and external needs for information and leveraged technology to relay news and safety advances in real time to customers and staff. All capabilities were handled in house by our various teams and we spent less than $5,000 on information dissemination from March through November 2020. By color coding each aspect to keep it both fresh and recognizable, we were able to draw unique importance so that the intended message was noticed and received.