During divisional playoffs, when it became clear that hometown team the Dodgers would go to the World Series, local excitement grew. With tens of thousands of people expected to attend every game, we needed to get the word out that transit was a good option.
We also wanted to tap into the moment of local pride and excitement, and align Los Angeles's transit agency as much as possible with Los Angeles's celebrated baseball team.
The Dodgers post-season culminated in the team's first World Series parade since 1988. Although the Dodgers won the 2020 World Series in Texas, there was no parade due to Covid restrictions. Los Angeles was beyond excited to celebrate their Dodgers. The social campaign also aimed to encourage Angelenos to go Metro to the parade and help first-time and occasional riders navigate the Metro system to attend the parade, since the event necessitated major road closures.
Our social media campaign spanned the divisional playoffs, the World Series games and the parade.
To achieve our goals of awareness and education among an audience that potentially had limited knowledge of and experience with public transportation, we deployed a multipronged strategy that aligned Metro with Dodgers and Los Angeles culture.
Dodger Stadium is notoriously difficult to access due to its location on top of a freeway-flanked hill near congested downtown. Metro operates a Dodger Stadium Express shuttle, which runs on a dedicated bus lane into the stadium, bypassing the car traffic heading into the stadium.
Our campaign strategy included educating the public on how to get to post-season games and the parade via transit, debunking the widely held belief that the stadium was impossible to access without a car, and building affinity for our brand and mass transit in LA by sharing in the excitement of victory.
We utilized original video to educate and entertain, posted informative maps and graphics, played into the rivalry with quips on X and in comments on our and other accounts' posts and celebrated the moment with a thematic bus headsigns.
This entry achieved our largest ridership day in almost a decade, increased media exposure and positive sentiment on social media and a ton of engagement from non-riders and riders alike. We delivered unexpected content that capitalized on a unique moment for Los Angeles.
The day of the Dodgers Parade was Metro's highest single-day ridership since 2016.
During the span of the campaign period, Metro gained 8,640 new followers across social platforms.
Of accounts engaging with Metro’s World Series posts, 65.6% were engaging with Metro for the first time.
We became part of the national media conversation when our video on how to walk to the nearest light-rail station from the stadium went viral.
The campaign generated over 5 million impressions and close to 400k total engagements across our social media channels, helping remind people in our region — where only 5% of commuters use transit to get to work — that we are a responsive government agency that is here and eager to serve our region.
This social media campaign complemented the efforts of the entire agency to provide a seamless customer experience that not only did what it promised (transported the public safely, conveniently and on time) but also provided an opportunity for Angelenos to get out of their cars and come together in a public space not only for the events but on the way to and back home.
