Say Hello to Pickup by Capital Metro Video
Target Audience: This video targeted people who live or work within seven defined Capital Metro Pickup zones in Austin and surrounding areas. We needed to reach customers who are making a short trip or making a connection to other CapMetro routes. Pickup boasts a diverse ridership base as each zone uniquely reflects different neighborhoods and communities, from students in a small-town suburb catching a ride to school to city workers who may have lost fixed-route coverage in their neighborhood, as well as paratransit customers. It was important for us to reflect that diversity in the video.
Strategy Objective:The strategy was to show how easy it is to use Pickup, but also to have fun with it and capture the imagination. With "Say hello to Pickup," we show customers dancing with joy as they catch Pickup directly from their homes and school, heading out to the park, shopping and medical appointments to give an idea of the variety of destinations available. We used actors reflecting our customer demographics including a paratransit rider, youth and seniors of various ethnicities. The video, available in English and Spanish, was posted on our YouTube channel and shared through social media and by our Community Engagement team to community partners.
Situation Challenge: On a broad level, the challenge was to introduce a new kind of service to existing customers and potential customers. Establishing Pickup was important for our overall system as Pickup fills in many gaps for neighborhoods that lack service. The challenge was getting people to expand their ideas of transit beyond traditional fixed-route service. There was some initial skepticism we had to overcome with customers who thought that direct pickup from their designated location within 15-minutes or less was "too good to be true." Others were hesitant to download a new app or call to book a ride. Bilingual outreach was also a priority as it was crucial to reach groups in harder-to-reach communities who may not understand the service.
Results Impact: The service is a success, and we are launching an aggressive schedule to produce 15 new zones in 2021. Before COVID, we averaged 600 trips per day across six zones. Since the pandemic, ridership fell considerably and as of January 2021 we have about 300 trips per day across seven zones. In talking with customers, the biggest barrier was getting over their initial hesitation. From there, the responses have been overall very positive. We have received an average customer rating of 4.9 (out of 5). Trips to the grocery store have by far been the most popular destination accounting for 40% of Pickup trips. The second most popular trip was utilizing Pickup to get to other transit, about 15% of trips in all zones. On social media, about 10,000 people were reached with 32 shares and 64 comments.
Why Submit: The success of Pickup speaks to the strong Marketing effort of this new service. We had customers who were resistant to a new form transit, whether it was due to unfamiliarity with on-demand ride sharing, having to change behaviors, or outright skepticism that the service would work properly. With the videos that we produced, we showed how easy it is to use the service and appealed to all demographics of our ridership reaching customers in English and Spanish. One customer commented, "This service is great for my students with disabilities. They're learning to use it to get around. I hope to see it expand more in the Leander and Austin area." We regularly receive requests for new zones. The video make it easy to share to share the message of Pickup as we grow the service.