NRT OnDemand is a dynamic ride-share service, which allows residents to book a trip to anywhere within the selected area using a home phone or a smartphone. Niagara Region Transit launched a one-year pilot program for this transit service in August 2020.

 

As the actual launch was during the COVID-19 pandemic Niagara Region did not have resources nor the ability to promote this innovative new service. Despite this ridership was growing organically. As the project got green-light for a second year, the Niagara Region Transit (NRT) team decided it was time to do a re-launch and promotional campaign. There were several challenges for this project; the first was the changing COVID-19 rules and lock-down/restrictions. These rules complicated our plans to launch a transit service that primarily relies on people going places outside their home.

 

The internal transit team wanted to focus on reaching three main demographics: teens, parent/caregivers and seniors. As these groups have completely diverse needs and ways to communicate, part of the project challenge was to identify ways those ways contact them and introduce the service. To address our three target audiences we decided to create different taglines for each group that incorporates key factors that through user surveys and feedback from stakeholders felt was important to them. But we strongly feel that if another target group were to see the other’s tagline they are still general enough to apply to them and still relevant.

 

Teens

From our Youth Advisory Group, we found that the safety, cost and speed and timeliness were important to them. So the chosen tagline was ‘Tap. Ride. Arrive.’ this quickly and succinctly informs the group in three words how straight forward it is to use the service and how it can safely transport you where you need to go. To effectively target this group, the marketing materials used a digital first approach.

Parents/Caregivers

For this group we have selected the words Custom. Safe and Convenient. This group potentially not only going to be ordering the service for themselves but also the two other target groups they care for. Therefore, the words chosen explain how our service is: safe, it gets you directly where you want to go and its going to pick you up right near where you are.

 

To reach our parent/caregiver audience we used a mixture of strategies to make sure we would reach this group. As they would also potentially see the ad and introduce the service for the other members of their network who are the other target audiences.

 

Seniors

The chosen tagline for this group is Easy. Clean. Safe. Based on feedback received from this group, it was discovered that Seniors: mostly call in rather than using the app and primarily don’t pay by credit cards to use the service and have difficulty with mobility. Therefore, we wanted to highlight the features of our service that helped make transit easy for them.

 

To reach our Senior audience we targeted them through direct mail, newspaper ads, videos.

 

Business Promotional Package

As we performed our research into areas of need, we found community agencies and business have many clients who could use our service. We proposed and launched a package of window clings, postcards, posters and tabletop cards to be given to business and partners such as: Local Area Municipalities, schools, local stores, local legions, community centres, Business Improvement Areas (BIA’s), Chamber of Commerce, tourism businesses, Niagara Regional Housing (NRH) Buildings, etc. This great cross promotional opportunity allows these groups to promote a service that would bring residents who normally would not have access to them, right to their door with ease, therefore eliminating a barrier to entry. We created a setup kit with several of each item as well as an introduction of the service.