Image Campaign

Target Audience: The target audience for RTD's Image campaign, which began in November 2017, was vast and varied. It included all RTD customers, non customers, and communities that we serve, influencers, including media, stakeholders/policymakers, and strategic partners as well as internal RTD groups, including employees, senior management, and board of directors.

Strategy Objective:The strategy was to create an integrated marketing and communications plan to reinvigorate RTD's image in a positive way touching on the shared core values. The marketing campaign utilized bold modern type and colorful imagery of RTD scenarios and personnel with short, meaningful facts to educate and inform the target audience. These stories were expanded on via PR/Communications efforts to share true RTD stories for social media, earned media, and internal communications. One "value" was featured at a time utilizing a phased approach. The campaign included a custom microsite to serve as the central repository for all stories and content, on vehicle and exterior signage, digital advertising (Facebook, retargeting), social media content, print advertising, and earned media.

Situation Challenge: Market research revealed a gap in how RTD is perceived and who our passengers know and want us to be. Generally, customers think positively about us and are loyal. Their attitudes toward us are rooted in personal experience. However, opportunity exists to improve by highlighting our benefits and emphasizing our involvement in local communities. Through research, feedback, and surveys, we have identified shared values that customers and our target audiences value most when making decisions to ride RTD. These include Safety, Reliability, and Affordability/Value, among others. The challenge was how best to convey these shared values to our audiences to instill greater confidence in RTD, improve personal experience, and enhance our position as a viable, trusted transportation partner.

Results Impact: Success measurement for this campaign was based on website visits, ad clicks and impressions, social media engagement, and news coverage. Total traditional media impressions during the 3 phases of the campaign were 7 million. Digital impressions were 6.5 million. Social media posts were our most effective outlet and positively pitched news stories earned more than $11,800 in media value. One positive news story reached 20x more people than the top-performing organic social post. The top 6 social posts received more than 22,000 impressions. The dedicated campaign webpage received 7,000 pageviews and 5,800 unique pageviews, with an average of 1:26 spent on this page during the campaign period, proving that those who visited were invested in the topic(s).

Why Submit: This campaign was entered and should win because it took a proactive approach to strengthening RTD's position as a trusted transportation partner. By using recent customer research data to inform the messaging and creative, we were able to leverage what customers believe to be our strengths/shared core values and begin a meaningful dialogue with customers, which resulted in a high engagement rate. In addition to paid and trade media, earned media also took a prime position within the strategy of this campaign, enabling us to extend our reach in a cost-effective manner. Long term shifts in perception will be measured with our market segmentation and satisfaction surveys conducted once every three years.