Can Los Angeles Make Public Transit Cool?

December 17, 2009 · 0 comments

Public transportation has a dirty name in America. So how do you make using the bus and the subway seem cool, especially in an image conscious city like Los Angeles?

In what appears to be a first for a transit system in the United States, LA’s Metro is now advertising its services as if it were a for-profit company. The embedded video tells the tale, but Metro has seen lots of success with this strategy. “Discretionary riders, those people who have the choice to commute by car or transit, have jumped from [a] 24 to 36 percent” share of total ridership.

So what’s behind LA’s strategy? First, the team consolidated the Metro into one cohesive brand. At one time, the video states, there were over 300 (!) logos in use by Metro. The company also simplified the colors of its buses to just two – orange and blue – to help riders associate the colors with the brand. The city brought in local artists to paint a number of subway stations, a two-fer that helps Metro’s image in the community and makes the physical stations better places to spend time in. As for traditional advertising, the Los Angeles Metro relied heavily on comparative ads that show the Metro as a hero and traveling by car as a villain. In one of my favorite touches of the campaign, baristas at local coffee shops wear Metro t-shirts with the hero/villain theme.

I applaud the Los Angeles Metro for this awesome campaign and for their increase in ridership. There are a few recommendations I’d like to make, though. The agency has a twitter account at @metrolosangeles, but with only 1,000 followers it doesn’t seem too popular. This is a great way for the agency to communicate with some of their riders and to share information about routes, service outages, etc. However there’s only so far you can go with the twitter/barista crowd. I recommend Metro to continue with community outreach programs like its art in the subway series. What about sponsoring performances of musicians in the stations? Or providing some sort of incentive program to the discretionary rider who constantly wrestles in between choosing the car or choosing the metro?

Thanks to The City Fix and The Infrastructurist for the scoop.

Tagged as: branding, design, losangeles, marketing

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Seppukoo.com’s Online Ritual Suicide

December 11, 2009 · 0 comments

PSFK tipped me off to Seppukoo.com, a social experiment of sorts where you gain points for disabling your facebook account (committing “virtual suicide”) and then encouraging your friends to do the same. I love the idea and I think it speaks to a lot of the issues and anxieties that people today have with social media.

Facebook, Twitter, et al are now such an integral part of our lives that we sometimes forget what life was like before their existence. We forget how productive we can be without these distractions. Most importantly, we seek true connection and friendship even though we are paradoxically surrounded by virtual friends all day long. Seppukoo.com calls itself a “liberation of the digital body from any identity constriction” so users can “rediscover the importance” of being themselves. Perhaps most telling, Seppukoo.com does not permanently delete your Facebook account. This begs the question: Once you’ve joined Facebook, or Twitter, or any number of similar sites, can you ever actually stop using them?

Tagged as: social media

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Promo from the Australian Coastal Watch

December 10, 2009 · 0 comments

I’m a big fan of this promo on the Australian Coastal Watch website. It’s extremely simple yet very effective. Saying any more would ruin it, so click on this link or on the image below to check it out.

Bondi Beach

Tagged as: australia

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Temporary.cc and the permanence of the Internet

November 16, 2009 · 1 comment

We’ve all heard that the Internet is making us dumb; with access to the world’s knowledge at our fingertips, people argue, there is no need to remember anything ever again. I’ll save that argument for another place and time and ask about something else: is it possible to forget in the age of the Internet?

Shortly after I submit this blog post, spiders will crawl this page and archive it forever. We are voluntarily creating records of everything we have ever thought or written down. This reality is part of the inspiration of Zach Gage’s Temporary.cc, a web page that destroys a part of itself for every unique visit it receives. There is no way to archive this information, because as Gage says “any subsequent act of viewing could irreparably modify it.”



Tagged as: communication, internet

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Closing Thoughts on Monster vs Vermonster

October 27, 2009 · 2 comments

Now that the dust has cleared on this Monster Energy Drink vs Vermonster beer debacle, I’d like to share some thoughts about the matter. I speak as someone who wrote their Master’s Thesis (along with two partners) on the psychology of consumer boycotts. Our thesis examined not only why people choose to boycott but how they spread word of their involvement through channels like blogs and social media. In the interest of brevity I will only speak about a few of these issues.

People who boycott Monster see the energy drink company as an example of corporate greed and corporate out-of-touchness (a scientific term, I assure you). But because these boycotters cannot literally boycott corporate greed, they reach for Monster. They channel these much deeper feelings into their campaign against Monster.

It was a heated fight, but I am happy to report that both sides have won. Rock Art Brewery, who brews Vermonster, wins the right to use the name of their product, receives an incalculable amount of press coverage, and gives its consumers the impression that their support of the product is somehow an extension of their disapproval of corporate America. Not that people who live in Vermont need any more reason to distrust corporate America, but it can’t hurt.

Monster Energy Drink didn’t lose this fight, however. At least one large-scale study (Ettenson & Klein) has shown that people who boycott a product do not initially let their behavior influence their evaluation of the quality of the product. In other words, no one has stopped literally liking the taste of Monster due to this situation. There are of course people who don’t like the taste of energy drinks, but that one is moot because there are also people who don’t like the taste of beer.

But it’s not all rosy for Monster, either. The energy drink category is one with a tremendous number of competitors and consumers can easily switch brands. This is in part what makes boycotting Monster so simple: consumers do not have to give up anything! They just begin drinking another type of energy drink and feel better about themselves. Some may argue (Funches et al) that these consumers feel empowered because they avoid Monster and because they can teach Monster a lesson by boycotting. There is no risk incurred when boycotting because there is no way for Monster to retaliate against the boycotters.

The previous study (E&K) demonstrates that people who remain angry with a brand (in this case, for a period of one year) begin to let their dissatisfaction affect their impressions of the product. This means that someone who is angry with Monster (and enjoys the product) can actually convince themselves that they dislike the taste of Monster. I predict that this will happen for a small number of participants, but otherwise believe that this issue will soon pass.

In our Thesis research, we found (and studies show, Yuksel & Mryteza) that the most effective way for companies to live down a crisis like this is to shower the target market with unrelated positive information about the company. Maybe Monster builds homes in low-income communities, or donates lots of money to cancer research or education. These are the types of things that, when publicized, make consumers say, “You know what? Maybe they ARE a good company after all.” But remember that consumers are smart and they can smell BS a mile away. There’s no guarantee that this will work, so their best bet is probably to lay low for a while.

Vermonster has the PR opportunity of a lifetime here. I wish them all the best and hope they can channel this publicity into lasting business for their brand. With that said, I’ll have a Sweetwater IPA tonight. Support your local brewery!

Thesis sources cited in this piece:
Ettenson, R, Klein, J.G. (2005), ‘The fallout from French nuclear testing in the South Pacific: A longitudinal study of consumer boycotts’, International Marketing Review

Funches, V, Markley, M, Davis, L. (2009), ‘Reprisal, retribution and requital: Investigating consumer retaliation’, Journal of Business Research

Yuksel, U, Mryteza, V. (2009), ‘An evaluation of strategic responses to consumer boycotts’, Journal of Business Research

Tagged as: beer, boycotts, social media

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