Risky Business
Marketers need to be agents of change, and effective change agents must be risk takers too. How about you? What risks did you take last year? What risks are you planning to take this year? How will the risks you take advance the reputation and ridership success of your transit organization?
About ten years ago, the transit system I worked for needed to build ridership and one of the key components of the plan was a television campaign built around a commercial called “My Name Is Eric”. The commercial showed a man sitting down with a group of people in a church basement. His opening line was, “Hello. My name is Eric…and I drive a car”. While the rest of the spot extolled the benefits of riding the bus versus driving, the support group portrayal was seen as too realistic by recovering alcoholics, especially one who happened to be a prominent local congressman. After three weeks of complaints, we pulled the spot. Ironically, a few weeks after it was pulled, it won an award from Advertising Age Magazine.
My boss at the time was quite understanding. In fact, he had challenged me and our ad agency to be edgy. But sometime risks aren’t as much about being edgy as they are about pursuing a big bold idea. And more often than not, big bold ideas are found at the intersection of risk and innovation.
A few years ago, after realizing that my organization had the ability and opportunity to identify a large portion of our riders, we started planning for a relationship or loyalty marketing program. The development costs were not insignificant, but we figured the program, once up and running could be sustained for much less than what a typical mass media campaign would cost. Within three years we had signed up over 20,000 participants as well as a number of promotional partners who created added value offers for our riders.
In this case, the effort didn’t result in any awards, but it did reward us with an effective ongoing way to stay close to our customer base at a time of service cuts, fare increases and budget reductions. It was an important priority to retain as many riders as possible under the circumstances, and our loyalty program gave us a highly personalized way to do so.
It was a risk born from a bold idea. You might say it was the right risk at the right time. And speaking of the right time, isn’t NOW a good time to go forward with that bold but risky idea that makes sense for your organization?
Keep the thread going by sharing a story that relates to your experience with taking marketing related risks. Let me hear from you!
Joe Caruso is Senior Consultant for Brecon Hill Consulting. He’s the former marketing director for the Milwaukee County Transit System (WI) and has over 32 years of transit marketing experience. He welcomes your comments at jcaruso@breconhill.com.