HEAT Tiny Bus Concert Series

Target Audience: Our primary target for this event was college students in the Greensboro area. Secondary target was the general population who may or may not use public transportation.

Strategy Objective:The HEAT Tiny Bus Concert Series was inspired by the National Public Radio Tiny Desk Concerts where musical performances across all genres are performed in the editorial offices of NPR. In our case, performances would take place in the back of a HEAT bus while in normal revenue service. The inaugural concert featured a jazz/blues quartet headed by the Chancellor of our largest school partner the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Serving as the leader of UNCG since 2015, Chancellor Frank Gilliam has built a positive reputation in the area for his interaction with students, support of the Greensboro community and his burgeoning music skills. The performances we hoped would gain favorable reviews from the student riders and garner media coverage.

Situation Challenge: Higher Education Area Transit (HEAT) is a college based transit service created in partnership with local colleges and universities through which their students can ride HEAT routes and the entire GTA system fare free. As the demographic is so young and transient, we wanted to create an event that would capture their attention as well as the overall community and increase awareness of HEAT and GTA.

Results Impact: We were pleased with the attention we received from the promotion. We were featured on two local television stations as well as a pair of publications. Several of the students posted photos and live video from the bus. The captured video of the concert was distributed among various online and social media vehicles. We did note a 10% increase in boardings the following month when compared to the same month last year, which we believe can be credited partially to the outreach conducted with the Tiny Bus Concert. In addition, representatives of an original HEAT partner school that dropped out of the program a number of years ago has contacted us about rejoining the partnership!

Why Submit: We believe the HEAT Tiny Bus Concert Series should win an AdWheel because the originality of the promotion (commandeered from another industry) made a successful application to a transit environment. Music and entertainment are highly valued with the 18-24 demographics we target for the HEAT transit service so the idea matched nicely with the audience we were shooting for. The logistics required to put on such a production, the least of which getting buy-in from the Chancellor of the city's largest university, made the end product a pleasure to watch and to listen to. We look forward to future concerts with other school partners, and hope to see other transit systems commandeer the idea for their use!