SouthWest Transit Get to the Fair Without a Care Comprehensive Campaign

Target Audience: Residents and visitors in the SouthWest Transit service area, which includes the cities of Eden Prairie, Chanhassen, Chaska and Carver.

Strategy Objective:We created newspaper ads, posters, flyers, back of the seat ads, social media posts, a bus wrap and digital ads that all utilized the same color scheme and phrase, "Get to the Fair Without a Care!" We aimed to keep all our marketing simple and consistent so that it was easily recognizable as a SouthWest Transit State Fair advertisement, even at a quick glance.

Situation Challenge: While we had seen a steady growth in our State Fair ridership over the years, we saw our first decrease in 2017. Our goal was to keep this from turning into a trend and to increase ridership yet again in 2018. 2018 also brought several construction projects to the Minneapolis area that significantly impacted people driving themselves to the Minnesota State Fair. We needed a clear and easy-to-understand message that presented our bus service as a fun, hassle-free alternative to sitting in traffic.

Results Impact: "Get to the Fair Without a Care" stuck with people. As a result, we broke our all-time State Fair ridership record by providing 104,378 rides. This was a 4% increase over our previous record of 100,034 and a nearly 5% increase from our 2017 ridership. In addition to the overall ridership increase, we also set new records for our highest opening day ridership with 9,700 customers and a highest single day ridership with 14,462 customers.

Why Submit: During a time when ridership across so many other areas is decreasing, we were able to find a way to not only increase this service's ridership but to break records! Our message was simple, but it stuck in people's minds. Combined with the excellent experience our drivers and ground crew offer our customers, we believe that people will continue to remember that SouthWest Transit really will get them to the fair without a care for years to come.