...to DO MORE. Finding a way to move

Transcription

1 ...to DO MORE. Finding a way to move Individualized Marketing from neighborhoods to business districts. Project Conducted by MOVABILITY AUSTIN SPRING 2015

2 PROJECT GOAL Our goal was to identify an effective and efficient way to transform commuting for the maximum number of downtown employees. Austin, Texas has serious congestion problems with a large portion of our workforce traveling to downtown Austin at the same time, and most of them driving alone. We have a significant interest in finding ways to get more downtown employees using commuting alternatives. Movability Austin worked with the City of Austin, Capital Metro, Austin Chamber of Commerce, and Downtown Austin Alliance to conduct an individualized marketing and behavior change pilot that motivates downtown employees to use travel options. Our strategy was to get employees re-evaluating their commutes, and give interested or curious employees the ability and support to change their behavior. To do this, we found no specific examples of Smart Trips focusing on employees/businesses and had to adapt from a resident/household focused approach. This presented two primary challenges: 1) how to reach individual commuters efficiently (scalability of direct contacts) and 2) how to offer commuting solutions effectively (scalability of fulfillment increasing an individual s ability and desire to act). This pilot required us to rethink shared values, core messaging, outreach methodology, and course correction. PROJECT SCOPE Our research identified time as the most compelling shared value between employers and their employees, rather than the traditional focus on pain points of traffic-related hassles. Our creative focused on redirecting attention from travel time to what can be done with that time. We designed flexible print and digital assets around the Do more: Transform your Trip messaging to support outreach experimentation. Our travel advisors were trained in Motivational Interviewing to make outreach as flexible, quick and engaging as possible. Outreach methodology consisted of flexibly deploying s to company decision makers, earned media coverage, targeted social media, and street-level activation. We started by testing our initial assumption, that employers would be the most effective way to reach employees by: Utilizing direct communications: business-to-business, targeting decision makers, direct in-person contacts, even partner (Austin Chamber and Downtown Austin Alliance) appeals. Sending bi-weekly s with testimonials, current news articles, and relevant information. Leveraging social media and press coverage to bolster awareness in the community. When initial assumptions showed inconsistent results, an example of course correction was deploying activations with a commute cart and travel advisors talking directly to employees, at employer-hosted events and on the street. 1

3 PROJECT RESULTS Employers turned out to be difficult to engage via mass marketing approaches. Going to employees directly proved highly successful at efficiently engaging high volumes of people and effectively transform their trips. Our initial outreach method of ing the company decision-makers and appealing to their presumed interest in cost-savings, lower stress for employees, and an interest in being part of the solution did not show a direct correlation to action. Open rate on the s was low. When employers did open s, they were not responding despite fairly robust communications that involved no cost and low time commitment. They just simply weren t compelled to share materials with their workforce. Similarly, earned media coverage and targeted social media were effective in telling the story of what we were offering, but did not show an immediate result in web visits or sign-ups. In fact, it was not until we decided to do street-level activations with a lemonade stand-type cart in high traffic areas that we found an effective way to get people to stop and talk and get pledges. As it turned out, big hurdle was that gatekeepers were not sufficiently motivated to open the gates on this idea. The light bulb moment for this pilot was that employees are willing to respond if you can catch them when they have a moment available. In that moment, you need to be prepared to quickly engage, learn, and tailor information to their interests and circumstances. We think these experiences confirm the power of face-to-face engagement for both employers and employees. It takes time to understand the businesses or employees motivations and circumstances and tailor a mobility solution to that. In our findings, this is an outcome worth building upon. We cannot be certain of the specific impacts of our messaging and communications approaches, but this pilot did find them to be helpful complements to the in-person communications. Movability Austin has engaged thousands of employees using traditional TDM techniques, including prizes and rewards, even gamification techniques. We see direct engagement of employees using this commute chat approach as an effective way scale up to reach more employees, more efficiently. 2

4 PROJECT FINANCES The Do more: Transform Your Trip pilot was funded by a STPMM grant from our regional planning organization (CAMPO Texas), with Capital Metro as the fund recipient. Capital Metro contributed the financial management, procurement support, project management, and marketing advice at no cost. The Austin Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Austin Alliance provided communications, research, staff time to this project as in-kind support. PROJECT BUDGET Direct Labor Hours Federal Portion Local Portion Total Total Direct Labor 3,474 $101,706 $29,628 $131,334 Total Indirect Costs $12,850 $8,100 $20,950 TOTAL $114,556 $37,728 $152,284 Total cost of DO MORE: Transform Your Trip $152,284 TOTAL DEDICATED STAFF HOURS 3

5 PROJECT SUMMARY We were most effective in reaching our audience with direct employee engagement, at employer-hosted events or on the streets during lunch. AT EMPLOYER-HOSTED EVENTS Setting up at company offices or fairs placed us directly in front of our downtown commuter audience and had a high intercept rate.this also required having a relationship with the right person at the company. 725 passerby* during 8 events 145 employees chatting up travel advisers 48% employees gave contact info 52% pledged to try something new 4

6 ON THE STREET For street activations, we would place our commute cart near office buildings that housed mass employee numbers. 4,560 passerby*(21 days) 228 employees chatting up travel advisers 58% employees gave contact info 38% pledged to try something new * Employer events had approx. 1 in 5 intercept rate. Street activations had approx. 1 in 20 intercept rate. While there s no standardized performance metric, for Smart Trips type programs, most see a behavior change in 15-30% of targeted residents. Our two outreach methods described above had comparable results, with a 52% and 38% respectively. 5

7 APPENDIX A Next City Can a Classic Counseling Technique Get People Out of Cars? Common urbanist wisdom says that if you build good alternatives to driving convenient transit, safe places to bike and walk people will give it a try. It sounds like a rational approach to dealing with the growing gridlock in all major American cities. Unfortunately humans are an irrational species. Movability Austin is a transportation management association that works with downtown employers and employees in Austin to promote alternative transportation. They re in the midst of a unique pilot project that uses a decades-old counseling technique called motivational interviewing that s helped people deal with overeating, cigarette and drug addiction, and other problems where will power or logic often isn t enough to change behavior. [Behavioral change] doesn t just happen because you give someone the ability to change it, says Glenn Gadbois, executive director of Movability Austin. Public health has learned over a long period of time that in order to really change someone s behavior you need to help them attach emotions and internal rewards to the behavior they re going to change. Gadbois says Movability is using motivational interviewing to get people to think about the pluses and minuses of their transportation choices. Austin streets simply can t handle the number of daily drivers. Inrix s annual Traffic Scorecard ranks Austin traffic fifth worst in North America. Nearly everyone in the city drives to work. According to the Census s 2012 American Community Survey, 76 percent of Austinites drive alone and 11 percent carpool while just 2 percent take transit, 1 percent bike and 2 percent walk. Further compounding the problem, Austin s populationis exploding. From it saw the second-fastest growth among major American cities. You can t build enough infrastructure for infrastructure alone to be the solution, says Gadbois. We don t have enough money and what money we do have cannot solve even a fraction of the problems in terms of future growth in congestion and such. So Movability started thinking about new ways to encourage people to choose more efficient travel modes. They discovered international consultancy Steer Davies Gleave (SDG) usesmotivational interviewing to influence people s transportation choices. Gadbois hired a SDG consultant to train his staff and interns how to conduct motivational interviews and put together the pilot project. Motivational interviewing centers on the idea that every behavior comes with trade-offs. The interviewer asks leading questions to try and get the interviewee to think about and articulate what they re doing now, think about the pluses and minuses of that choice, and consider alternatives. For the Austin pilot project, Movability sends interns out for hour-and-a-half stints at lunchtime. 6

8 They try to strike up conversations with passersby by asking, how was your commute today? They ve gotten about one in 20 people to stop and talk. Of those people who stop, nearly all are willing to engage in a 10-minute motivational interview in which the interns walk them through questions about how they commute, the good and the bad of that mode choice, and what they think of other options. We re finding a lot of people are frustrated by the minuses of driving, Gadbois says, but have never really worked their way through the pluses of some other options. They think about the convenience, safety and security of getting in a car by themselves and also the minus of frustrating traffic, higher costs. In a month and a half of interviews, Movability has gotten around 200 people to agree to try a different way of commuting. Gadbois says that s about 35 percent of the people who ve stopped and talked to them. After the motivational interview is complete, Movability follows up with information about how to take transit or find good bike routes. They ve also been following up to see how many people have actually tried an alternative mode. Only about 10 percent of participants have actually done so. Gadbois is hopeful that over the final month of their pilot that number will go up. Their target is to reach 1,000 downtown employees and get at least 400 to pledge to try a new form of transportation. He admits, Our success rate is a little lower than we thought it would be, but it s still better than any other technique. KVUE Movability Austin Cutting Congestion with Commute Chats 7