N Line Opening: Bringing the Rail North
Target Audience: The target audience for this campaign included the entire Denver metro area with specific focus on residents, businesses, and jurisdictions along the N line rail alignment between Denver, Commerce City, Northglenn, and Thornton. This audience included commuters traveling to Downtown Denver; commuters making rail or bus transfers from the N Line to other metro areas; business and leisure travelers connecting to the University of Colorado A Line to the airport; new customers along the corridor unfamiliar with RTD rail services; and stakeholders, advocates, and long-term supporters who helped to bring rail to the north with the September 21, 2020 opening.
Strategy Objective:To reach diverse audiences across the region, we took a multi-layered marketing approach. The design and messaging focused on the vibrant purple color designating the line, the N Line mark, the map, and destinations, with a modern typeface. The larger-than-life wrapped trains ran throughout the district as mobile billboards, creating awareness of the N Line's future-forward development and greater accessibility in a most tumultuous year. For high impact and visibility, we focused on digital media, broadcast, outdoor, and on-vehicle installations, layered across a four-week period. Adhering closely to all public health guidelines, we developed and promoted a grand opening livestream to maintain public engagement and developed and communicated enhanced safety measures for public free rides.
Situation Challenge: We developed this campaign to increase awareness of the opening of the new N Line, which connects the north metro areas to downtown, creates greater access across the metro area, and offers opportunities for transit-oriented development along the 13-mile N Line corridor. With this campaign, we wanted to educate the public, generate excitement, encourage safe ridership, and promote the virtual grand opening of the new line north. Our unique challenge was achieving these goals while managing customer expectations, safety protocols and social distancing needs, and respecting customer priorities/operational realities during a global pandemic. Once we determined we would indeed open this new rail service during a pandemic, we had just a few weeks to execute our marketing strategy.
Results Impact: This comprehensive four-week campaign culminating in the grand opening on September 21 generated tremendous awareness for the N Line, resulting in more than 49,217,897 million multimedia impressions from August 31 to September 30, 2020. Included in these impressions were: 33,434,832 on vehicles; 2,413,291 television; 4,024,200 radio; 5,535,585 out of home; 252,349 print; and 3,557,640 digital impressions. In addition, more than 1,700 viewers tuned into the 9 a.m. livestream the day of the grand opening and ribbon cutting. Today, the impact of this campaign and the opening of the N Line continue to boost the community's connection with the greater-metro area and economic development around the stations, surrounding areas, and downtown.
Why Submit: RTD's N Line campaign was a strategic, comprehensive, and integrated effort that reached millions of residents and commuters throughout the Denver metro area. Typically, a campaign of this magnitude would roll out over eight to ten weeks. FRA approval for the opening was confirmed in August, which provided a significantly shortened timeframe. We continually gauged and responded to the effects of the ongoing pandemic on the community and prioritized safety above all else, even changing the format of the grand opening event itself up until a few days prior to adhere to public safety requirements. We garnered regional media attention, cultivated widespread engagement and awareness, and created a reason to celebrate during a challenging year for transit, our community, and our world.