Public Perception Campaign

The Problem

People didn't see Pierce Transit as a critical local service. We also got confused with Sound Transit, which provides a regional rail service. I needed to clarify what we offer and tie it to community health. I needed to help people value what we offer. But how?

The Solution

Rather than getting lost in the finer points of our service, I stripped each service back to what it was really helping solve for. Words like opportunity, local business, and staying active started popping up. All things no one would disagree are important.

I took these words and made a simple template to showcase them in:
"Improving local transit, because [universally recognized need] matters" with our logo below. This essentially let us tell people, "This obviously matters to our community. Pierce Transit helps with that. Pierce Transit matters."

Once approved by key stakeholders, I made billboards, transit ads, bus shelter ads, and magazine ads that all pointed to a landing page where people could learn more about Pierce Transit and share their own transit stories. The stories could then be used to further illustrate this in later rounds of the campaign.

The Result

The landing page took off and was one of our most-visited non-service-related web pages with over 17,000 visitors during the run of the campaign. Our ads garnered nearly 31,000,000 impressions. We received dozens of great stories and created dialogue with locals throughout Pierce County. It was even used in conversations with elected officials to help key decision makers in Pierce County understand at a glance how we're impacting their cities and districts.