DART Marketing Campaign

Target Audience: We targeted young adults who commute within Des Moines or to and from its suburbs. They are cost- and environmentally conscious, and therefore are more likely to make transit routine. We chose this audience because we saw an opportunity when comparing population and ridership statistics. We know 52% of people living in the Des Moines area are ages 34 and under. However, only 39% of DART's riders are 34 and under. Many catalyst moments can cause this audience to think about how they will commute, such as moving or changing jobs. If we place DART into their consideration set of transportation choices at these catalyst moments, we can increase the number of people choosing transit over a personal vehicle.

Strategy Objective:We focused on digital advertising, including digital display, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify and Snapchat. To be more targeted with our advertising, we narrowed the audience to adults ages 18-29 and split them into two groups. The first group was commuters between downtown and the suburbs. The messaging focused on DART's Park & Ride locations and being free to do things other than drive, like read, text or relax. We targeted near suburban Park & Ride locations and directed ads to the Park & Ride webpage on ridedart.com. The second group was people commuting and traveling within the city of Des Moines. The messaging focused on money savings and environmental benefits of taking transit. We targeted the city of Des Moines and directed people to the trip planner on ridedart.com.

Situation Challenge: Resident mindset: Des Moines is known for short commutes by car. "You can get anywhere in 20 minutes!" is what people say about why they enjoy living here. We know it may take longer to ride DART to work, so we want to show the personal and community benefits to choosing transit. Ridership goals: DART has an organizational goal to reach 5 million rides by end of FY 2020. The campaign was implemented to help reach this goal by increasing ridership among people choosing to take transit versus riding because they need to. Public support: Another challenge DART faces is securing long-term funding. The marketing campaign shows the agency is actively promoting its services and working to increase ridership, a metric that will help make the case for securing long-term funding.

Results Impact: The campaign generated more than 10.5 million impressions and 31,250 clicks to ridedart.com. Facebook was the most effective platform, driving 28,000 of total clicks to the website. Traffic to DART's website increased significantly. Over the course of the campaign, there was a 93% increase of page views on the Park & Ride webpage and a 49% increase of page views on the Trip Planner webpage, compared to the same time period the year prior. For ridership, DART had decreased in ridership nine out of the twelve months prior to the campaign, compared to the year prior. After the campaign began, we started to see an uptick in ridership with only two out of the five months showing a decrease. In July 2018 alone, ridership increased 3.34%, compared to a 2.4% decrease the year prior.

Why Submit: The research behind this campaign and how DART used real riders in its marketing is why this entry should win an AdWheel Award. We conducted research using existing data from partners, city databases and an online survey to determine and further define our target audience. We involved that audience to test our creative, evaluate the best channels to use and better understand which messages resonate. When it came to finding riders to use in the advertising, we found them within the target audience as well. We hope this entry will serve as an example of how other agencies can create more effective marketing campaigns by taking time in the early stages to conduct research and involve their target audience in the process.