Permanent Campaigns Consulting

Parking lots are for customers, not employees

2008-07-23T00:23:07Z

Here’s a message to employers (with a pitch to get them to buy transit passes for their employees):

Your parking lot is for your customers. If your employees are using it, that means your customers are not. You’re better off if your parking lots stays empty because your employees ride transit to work. Buy them transit passes. Make it easy for your customers to shop with you.

What is the social meaning of your transit brand?

2008-07-15T13:29:41Z

I love the blog Church of the Customer (an outgrowth of Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell’s work, particularly in the More Rider Magazine-reviewed book Creating Customer Evangelists). Today, Jackie has 10 questions with Rob Walker who wrote a book called Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy And Who We Are. This is my favorite question and answer, because it taught me that even though we like to think that all our potential riders are rational people who will ride the bus when it is convenient and cheap to do so, the social meaning of taking the bus (”I’m poor!” or “I’m unsuccessful!” *or* “I’m smart!” or “I’m an up-and-comer!”) matters much more than we like to admit. And so, we need to shape the social meaning of taking the bus head on to get more riders.

Q: You think we’re not so immune to branding and logos as some of us think we are. How so, and do you include yourself in that?

A: Sure, although I didn’t used to. For me, the breakthrough was Nike buying Converse. I’d already been writing about branding and approaching the subject as an above-it-all journalist. I was the outsider, the detached observer, unaffected by things I was documenting. As a business journalist, I have great respect for Nike. As a consumer, I would never, ever, wear the swoosh.

I’d always worn Converse sneakers since my teen years. I never said to myself, “I wear Converse sneakers to identify with my rebel rocker heroes.” Nobody has those conscious thoughts. But I was bothered that Converse would be owned by Nike. I wasn’t sure I could wear Converse anymore because somehow its “meaning” had changed.

Then I caught myself: If I’m so immune to “brand meaning,” why am I having a crisis over sneakers?

It was a reality check. It’s something I consider every time someone tells me that brands mean nothing to them. It affected my approach to the book, which is aimed at people who have the mindset I used to have. We’re better off if we get over being brandproof and embrace the idea that this stuff does have meaning.

Even people who resist brand meaning recognize that material culture and consumer decisions have consequences for the planet and our own sense of satisfaction. If we really want to be in control in a meaningful way, approach the dialogue with eyes open. That’s the only way to make decisions we really want to make.

Nissan — a car manufacturer — is pushing for more mass transit

2008-07-05T14:38:32Z

This is a sign of the times.

Nissan’s North American headquarters is in Nashville. They built a new office building in a suburb (typical). But now, they are pushing for more mass transit service.

Here’s the blurb in the Tennessean from the real estate developer:

Transit service sought

Had gasoline prices hit the $4 mark 10 years ago, the development probably wouldn’t have happened, Emery [the real estate developer] said. But now that there is so much in Cool Springs, and plenty of land for more housing, the high gas prices shouldn’t have any effect, he said. The company is pushing for more mass-transit service, he added.

——————-

That’s rich. And somehow, our advocacy for a dramatic expansion of transit, needs to reflect the new paradigm. We need to develop a proposal for every state legislature, every governor, every city council, every mayor, the Congress and the new Administration so that when they figure out how to meet the demands of their constituents (including car manufacturers!) for more transit, there is a proposal on the table they can implement.

It’s our job to develop that proposal and make it very public. Because if we don’t come up with a specific proposal that the government can implement in the next fiscal year, then the likeliest reaction to the growing demand for more transit will be lip service. To translate the growing demand into an actionable proposal that is implemented, agencies and advocates have to come up with “What the Government Can Do Now” and propose it publicly.

Public policy proposals are part of a communications plan.

New York speeds up bus route with fewer stops, pre-payment and bus-only lanes

2008-07-01T23:21:25Z

Thanks to Bernie Wagenblast’s Transportation Communications News for the tip, I learned via Wired that New York’s MTA has begun a bus rapid transit upgrade for one of the Bronx-Upper Manhattan bus routes.

Travel times get faster by (a) skipping lots of bus stops (b) pre-payment of fares with a machine that generates a receipt at the station instead of paying on the bus, allowing riders to get on in both doors quickly (c) bus-only traffic lanes and (d) traffic signal prioritization so the traffic light stays green for the bus.

The MTA is calling this Select Bus Service with a new brand. Instead of bus stops, they are now stations. I think the MTA has an opportunity to launch a monthly newsletter to riders where they promote the faster travel times and generate a sense of shared aspiration to shave minutes off the trip (hurry up and board!) so the MTA can build up some community support for skipping past the local bus stops. It can also build up support for better police enforcement of cars stuck in the bus-only lanes and educate riders and local elected officials about the centrality of faster travel times — helping to push the police to actually enforce the law by getting riders and residents to call. Finally, this is a chance to really generate some word-of-mouth marketing by riders. To get that, though, the agency has to ask riders to spread the word.

Marketing with other distribution channels drives airport tickets to record in San Francisco

2008-06-27T16:25:30Z

Congratulations to Bay Area Rapid Transit for hitting a ridership milestone of 10,000 daily riders on their SFO airport service. Credit is given to European travelers taking advantage of the strong euro and the weak dollar, as well as smart marketing of BART tickets to Europeans through travel websites like travelocity, expedia and orbitz.Tourist marketing means making it easy for them to buy tickets and not expecting them to find your machines. According to BART, they are the only American agency selling transit passes on the travel websites. Come on, transit! If you cover an airport, get on these travel websites fast! The shared van services are already on the sites. Don’t let them take your fares!Plus, the news article in the East Bay Business Times was clearly generated by a smart press release by BART, so congratulations to them for generating some goodwill by sharing their agency successes with the taxpayers who pay for it.

Google Transit now available on Google Maps for mobile phones! Press release time!

2008-06-07T22:26:28Z

Fantastic news. Google released Google Transit as part of their Google Maps for mobile devices this week. Check out the Google blog for details or the Google Mobile blog. And to download right away, just go hereкомпютри.

Unfortunately, Google has not released the new version for Treo devices yet, so we’ll have to wait a bit longer. Only the Blackberries are ready to go today.

If you are part of an agency that provides your feed to Google so your data is on Google Transit, this is a good time to let your loyal riders know about this fantastic new feature on their mobile device. Of course, you must have an electronic newsletter so you are already emailing your most tech-savvy riders every month and it will be as easy as can be to tell them in the June issue about this great feature. If not, then put a link on your website to Google Maps, preferably next to your trip planner, so when your riders are looking for route information on their mobiles, they can find out about the new release and download it right then and there. And to show your taxpayers and elected officials that you are continually providing more and better services to the community, put out a press release touting the new feature of Google Maps with a huge press release splashed on your website to generate more traffic and more support.

And if you have not yet signed up with Google, then what are you waiting for? Talk to Aaron Antrim at Trillium Transit about getting your agency set up quickly and reasonably. Tell Aaron we sent you.

Congratulations to Google. I can’t wait until the Treo-compatible version is released.

Happy Birthday to this blog

2008-06-04T18:25:10Z

Thank you for being part of the community of transit communicators.

We launched this blog one year ago today with a post on the Detroit People Mover’s relentless efforts to introduce new potential riders to the service with speed dating, pub crawls and even a poker game. This is the 94th post.

Since our launch, we’ve also sent out two issues of More Riders Magazine, offered an e-newsletter service and we’re about to announce our first series of training workshops in late July and early September (thanks to those who filled out the survey to help shape these workshops — it’s not too late if you haven’t done so yet!)

We’re cooking up some changes (with a potential rebrand and a partnership) so thank you again for reading and helping to document and disseminate the best practices in transit communications to get more riders.

Survey on transit communications staff training / workshop

2008-05-30T17:24:47Z

Help us decide what sort of a training to hold on transit communications.

Click here to take a survey on what sort of a skills development workshop or staff training you would like to participate in.

It’s a seven-question survey (so less than five minutes) that asks you if you would be interested in a staff training on transit communications, and if so, asks what time of year, what sort of deliverables you want to walk away with and how long you would like such a workshop to last.

This is our only way to gauge interest in putting together a transit communications workshop, so please share your thoughts so we can put together the workshop that will improve your skills. Thanks!

Spring 2008 issue of More Riders Magazine on the way to subscribers — subscribe today!

2008-05-27T21:11:25Z

We’re very excited that the Spring 2008 issue of More Riders Magazine is on the way to subscribers today.

This issue includes a long interview with Tom Sly of Google on how Google Transit offers agency a powerful and free tool to attract new riders (and our friend Aaron Antrim of Trillium Transit Information Solutions participates as well), a related essay by our own Matt Hardigree on how digital maps transform the idea of maps, an interview with the University of Chicago’s Brian Shaw on the relationship between parking costs and transit costs from the perspective of a landowner and employer, an interview with the Federal Transit Administration’s Robert Tuccillo, book reviews of Mavericks at Work, The Anatomy of Buzz and Creating Customer Evangelists and the latest batch of our 100 Great Ideas to increase transit ridership.

If you aren’t a subscriber yet, what are you waiting for? You can pay the $144 annual subscription online today and receive the Spring issue by the end of the week. If you’d rather pay by check, just send me an email at Dan@PermanentCampaigns.com (or call me at 312.933.4890) and I’ll email you an invoice and immediately put the Spring issue in the mail to you while your check is processing.

To business, from transit: expand here and we’ll pay for your parking lot

2008-05-27T18:20:42Z

I like to follow the economic development debates on how municipalities and counties and states can attract new businesses and expand their existing ones.

Too often, the tool that governments use to attract businesses is a tax break of some kind. The pitch is essentially “Open your business here and we won’t tax you.” That’s a cost to the government (the special tax break is called a tax expenditure, and it’s essentially the same thing as the government just cutting a check to the business) and the tax cut strategy of economic development should be compared to other methods of economic development using government money to see which one is the most efficient and provides the most benefits to everyone.

A better economic development tool (in lots of circumstances) is spending government money on good transit. For the business that opens or expands near the transit network, the benefit is that the business doesn’t have to pay for parking. That’s a big savings. And, of course, everyone gets to use the transit network (including customers and neighbors of the business). A tax cut check from the government to a single business doesn’t provide any benefits to anyone else.

Sometimes these policy debates occur in separate silos and it isn’t often that the people making decisions about extending economic development packages to new businesses in a city or state include the transit agency leaders at the table (to come up with a special bus route or free passes for the first year or some other creative idea to leverage transit). That should change, and it’s probably the job of the transit agency leader and board members to kick down the door of the economic development offices and offer transit up as a tool to attract new businesses to the community.

Using transit for economic development is part of a well-thought-out communications plan that focuses on all stakeholders.