Category: Marketing

Metra finally updates its marketing strategy

February 27, 2013 / / 6 Comments

Photo of a new billboard by John Greenfield. 

My Streetsblog Chicago partner John Greenfield writes about Metra’s new push to get more riders: free tickets.

The transit agency will be giving away two free tickets to any destination in the system to 500 people per week for fourteen weeks – a total of 14,000 tickets, good for the next 90 days. The recipients, who must be 18 or over, will be randomly chosen from those who register at MetraRail.com/TestDrive.

While there doesn’t seem to be any method for preventing current Metra riders from scoring free tickets, the hope is that the lion’s share of the winners will be newbies. To promote the giveaway to people who currently commute by car, the agency is spending roughly $390,000 on marketing, including billboards visible from expressways and radio spots in English and Spanish following traffic reports and gas price updates, as well as Internet advertising. The billboards emphasize the financial, time-saving and relaxation benefits of making the switch.

It’s about time that Metra got serious with its marketing and used messages that actually sell the service. Focusing on the kind of marketing that actually convinces customers – of any product or service – is the right move. That focus? Our product costs less than the alternative.

Metra’s current marketing consists of boring-looking billboards on its tracks as they cross expressways with things like, “Fly to work”, “We’re on time, are you?”, and “Easy come, easy go” (what does that even mean?).

There was no call to action, and no information for drivers to respond to immediately (or when their call is stuck in bumper to bumper traffic).

An example billboard over the Kennedy Expressway, south of Grand Avenue. This sign says “Easy come, easy go”. 

New Honda commercial tells people it’s okay to drive their car while sleepy

October 31, 2012 / / 10 Comments

Eff you, Honda.

Partial transcript:

We know you.

[Shows guy yawning.]

We know you have to rise early and work late.

[Shows someone drinking coffee. Shows “Lane Departure Warning” signal and an obscured person driving on a rural road driving their Honda Accord in the opposite direction lane, then swerving back into the correct lane.]

With not enough sleep in between.

[Shows hands of driver moving the steering wheel to maneuver the car back into the correct lane with driver’s shoulders moving dramatically to either show that the steering wheel had to be yanked or that he’s shrugging off the moment.]

The rest of the commercial shows different features and makes stupid comments about your needs and desires.

It’s not okay to drive in that condition.

Customer reviews for my bike map app

July 15, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Only reviews left for the current version are displayed on the iTunes Preview page, and the default view of the iTunes Store. 

I’m appreciative of the two reviews people have left for my app – it’s a bike map for Chicago stored in your phone, download in iTunes. Their positivity and the slight increase in sales this past week has increased the ranking of my app. I don’t know what the ranking means.

When my app first ranked, in its Reference category, it was 385, then 289, and now stands at 315. I’m not sure on what factors the ranking is based, but I’ve gathered some clues from other bloggers:

[In addition to the number of downloads, other] factors play into the ranking equation such as how long the app is opened as the active app and how often the app is opened.

There’s no mention of reviews on that page, but I found another article that mentions more ways to improve your app, which includes having positive reviews. (Another factor it mentions is frequently updating the app.)

I’d like to hear from my app’s users what their feedback is before they leave a review in the iTunes Store. I can address issues directly with users and discuss how they can (or cannot) be incorporated in a future update to the app. You can send your feedback to me, and your love to the app store. (A major downside of the customer reviews process in the iTunes Store is the inability for the developer to respond.)

My app’s received two reviews (both 5 stars!) so far:

Saw this app being discussed on Twitter and thought I’d check it out. So, on the hottest day of 2012, I jumped on my bike and rode around my area checking out the apps features. Color me impressed! I rode to a few areas that I was not over familiar with and activated the app to peruse my options via my bike (or CTA). I look forward to using this on my far south/far north bikiing adventures soon!

The first reviews about the first version:

Would be great if it could locate on the map with GPS. Also if it could zoom out more. These bike lanes have come a long way recently. There are some really nice new places to ride like the cycle track on Kinzie. But there are also some old routes out there that are great biking such as the Boulevard System (Humboldt, Logan, Palmer Sq) that you could show on your map. And it says it supports German, but it is in English 🙂

The part about my app being available in German was true for v0.1, but I’ve fixed that for v0.2. If you’re going to leave a review, I’d like to leave you with this advice, for I feel it makes for a constructive review:

  1. Describe what is good about the app, and what you like about the app.
  2. Describe how you’ve used the app.
  3. Suggest ways the app could improve.

This was what the first version looked like. It wasn’t very good. 

The Chicago Fire Department has one of the least useful Twitter feeds, but sometimes it’s hilarious

June 21, 2012 / / 0 Comments

20 minutes ago, when the Twitter outage probably corrected itself, the Chicago Fire Department’s Office of News Affair tweeted three photos, without comment. I’ve posted them in reverse order.

Tweet 3

The third photo (above) shows a BMW X5 SUV on top of a Jaguar sedan and Mercedes E320 sedan in a multi-level parking garage. The parking garage appears to be a split-level, and it seems the BMW SUV was moved forward from an upper level to the tops of these cars, which you can see in the second photo (below).

Tweet 2

Tweet 1

The photos appear to have been taken with a cellphone, using the flash. The license plates are obscured by their reflection of the flash. The car broke through the cables leading me to ask two questions: What is the level of tension on the cables? How fast did the car travel?

The @CFDMedia account is often cryptic. The Chicago Sun-Times provided more information an hour later:

A 74-year-old man driving a 2012 BMW X5 crashed through cable barriers separating two levels of a Loop parking garage Thursday — and his SUV came to a stop atop a 2005 Jaguar and a 2003 Mercedes-Benz parked on the level beneath him, police said.

Police cited the 74-year-old with driving too fast for conditions.

Updated 16:18 to add a report from the Chicago Sun-Times.

GM hired a transit rider to promote their Volt, I think

May 17, 2012 / / 0 Comments

A screenshot of the GM Chevy Volt ad I saw on Hulu. 

If you’re like me and most Americans, you probably see an advertisement for a car at least once a day. In an ad I watched on Hulu tonight, it appears GM filmed someone who takes buses and trains (or rides her bike) to sell people on the Chevy Volt.

The woman (the ad’s overlay text makes it seem like she’s a real owner) says, “I don’t event know what it’s like to stop and get gas” and “I am probably going to the gas station about once a month, probably less”.

With a car that only gets 35 MPG city, 40 MPG highway,* and has a range of 379 miles, she must be taking the bus for all those other trips she has to make each month! Or she walks to work each day and bikes to the grocery store on weekends. Or she just rarely leaves the house. But I don’t think the ad implies any of these things: instead it’s telling viewers that this automobile has amazing gas mileage (the ad never mentions it has an electric motor component).

The “average American” makes 3.79 trips per day with an average trip length of 9.75 miles. If this Volt driver was that average person, she would be driving 1,108.58 miles every 30 days. And her car doesn’t have that much range. It has a third of that.

She might have bad memory, though, about visiting gas stations.

The Toyota Prius, for comparison, gets 51 MPG city, 48 MPG highway,* and starts at $7,000 less.

* These are only estimates. The Chevy Volt gets 94 MPGe when running on purely the electric motors.

N.B. The Chevy Volt website shows a photo of the car in the position where it will spend most of the time: parked. I appreciate that accuracy!