Fair Transit South Cook Pilot Program

Challenge:

The goal of the Fair Transit pilot is to increase service and lower costs for south Cook County and north Will County residents who experience longer commute times and spend up to half of their income on transportation expenses. This pilot was designed to help better understand the challenges facing residents and business and provide the data that will allow the implementation of the right solutions. With the economic challenges presented by the global pandemic, this program is an opportunity to address the critical need for all residents to access public transit to get where they need to go. 

Morreale was tasked with designing an educational campaign to raise awareness among Cook County residents and stakeholders about the reduced fares and improved service in the south side of Chicago, south suburban Cook and north Will Counties on Metra’s Metric Electric and Rock Island lines and Pace Suburban Bus (Pace) Route 352 Halsted bus.  

Solution:

Based on customer research, Morreale founded the “Made For You” campaign based on messages that resonated with target demographics.   

Affordability   
Improved schedule    
Reduced fares  

To reach the target audiences and demographics the campaign used the tagline “Made For You,” which is inclusive and personal as it speaks to the individual’s needs. The Fair Transit South Cook pilot was built specifically for the resident who experiences longer commute times and is concerned about transportation costs. The secondary text is tailored to either Metra or Pace riders to provide more context about the program benefits and describe the reduced fares for Metra and increased service on Pace Route 352 Halsted.  

Our team developed a bi-lingual, multi-platform, layered approach.
The campaign advertisements were developed in English and Spanish.

Result:

The campaign was successful and surpassed typical advertising benchmarks in terms of the number of impressions and clicks through rates (CTR). The marketing efforts ultimately achieved 12.6 million impressions (the number of times an advertisement is seen). The CTR for digital display and social media advertising was 0.14%, which surpassed industry benchmarks, referring to the average expected response to the advertisements for the digital displays and social media. A high click-through rate means that the advertisements resonated with the target audiences and people were clicking on the digital advertisements, which brought them to the Fair Transit South Cook website. There were over 11,000 visits to the website during the height of the campaign.