Everyday Heroes
Target Audience: As the pandemic swept the nation in the early spring, the daily heroic work of our frontline workers increasingly came into focus. We developed Everyday Heroes to showcase and thank the individuals—facility and maintenance staff, mechanics, security personnel, and operators—who worked tirelessly to maintain a safe environment on our vehicles for the rest of our community. The target audience included both RTD employees as well as the general regional public.
Strategy Objective:Everyday Heroes was created to highlight RTD's essential workers, our operational staff. We hear feedback day after day that our frontline teams go above and beyond when it comes to serving and protecting the communities and patrons they serve. In the midst of fare suspension, rear-door boarding, and minimal to zero person-to-person contact, we sought to reinforce this connection between our customers and the people who work, day in and day out, to keep them safe. Photos of RTD staff on the job and messages of gratitude drove the messaging. The strategy was to flood our feeds with "Thank yous" for our essential workers to keep the spotlight on their heroic acts. We used the hashtag #HeroesMovingHeroes to encourage our followers to participate.
Situation Challenge: At the onset of Colorado's stay-at-home orders, as our agency waited in the national queue to acquire personal protective equipment (PPE), we saw our frontline employees rise to new challenges and find innovative ways to keep our region's essential workers moving safely through the region. It was important to our agency to not only highlight the agency's essential workers but to rally the public around our staff to reinforce the person-to-person connections that make RTD the best transit choice in the greater Denver region.
Results Impact: Everyday Heroes launched on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn on April 16. In the campaign's 60-day span, we profiled 40 frontline RTD employees in 46 total posts receiving a total of 143,555 organic impressions. Eight businesses or families made mask donations to help keep our frontline employees safe during a countrywide PPE shortage. With an 8% engagement rate (11,267), messages of support flooded into the replies of our posts, highlighting the strong bond our frontline employees have cultivated with customers across the region.
Why Submit: When the pandemic and its early fallout began to hit the Denver region, we found ourselves, a public agency, increasingly isolated from the people we were meant to serve. In addition, the fundamental inability to provide work-from-home options for our frontline staff weighed heavily on our leadership team. When numerous agency projects were being put on the back burner, we pivoted and developed Everyday Heroes to bridge the widening gap between our service and our community. The high level of organic reach and engagement only further reinforced the value of our operational staff, our essential employees. It invigorated our staff, showed appreciation in a very public way, and helped reconnect the people who put themselves at risk to keep our region moving in times of crisis.