Student Adventure Pass Campaign Gains Thousands of New Student Riders
OPPORTUNITY
When Metrolink launched its Student Adventure Pass, a pilot program that lets college students ride Southern California’s regional rail system for free, the agency needed to quickly raise awareness and drive ridership among the region’s college students, a majority of whom commute to campus. While this commuter student demographic has historically been difficult to reach, Metrolink had a prime opportunity to engage an audience of more than 1 million+ potential transit riders with a compelling offer – free rides – and possibly kindle a lifetime habit of transit usage in a new generation of riders.
By leveraging local college students’ user-generated content creation, the campaign aimed to showcase real-world applications of the Student Adventure Pass, making it a practical and appealing choice for young commuters.
APPROACH
Celtis’ approach to the Student Adventure Pass campaign centered around engaging students through their preferred social media platforms, including TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Spotify, Instagram, and Snapchat. Understanding the target audience’s content preferences, the campaign put a strong emphasis on UGC (user-generated content) videos showcasing local college students taking real-world trips. By focusing on authentic narratives that were relatable and tangible to the target audience, our aim was to resonate deeply with local students. The campaign was also meticulously timed to match the school calendar, ensuring maximum engagement and visibility.
OUTCOME
The choice to use real student experiences and snapshots of college life as the backbone of the campaign proved highly effective. By prioritizing UGC over traditional branded creative and allocating the media spend to favor platforms like TikTok, the campaigned achieved extraordinary results in viewership, engagement, and cost efficiency. In fact, UGC content outperformed branded creative by nearly 3:1 across key metrics. The campaign garnered 10 million impressions, 2.5 million video views, and consistently strong Student Adventure Pass usage each month. The campaign showed consistent growth through increases in student ridership each month. During the campaign 30,000+ passes were utilized each month. Moreover, the campaign’s alignment with the academic calendar and the emphasis on engaging, relatable content led to high levels of post engagement and an overwhelmingly positive reception from students.
In recognition of the campaign’s success, Metrolink has re-engaged Celtis to build upon and expand this winning strategy as the Student Adventure Pass program heads into its second year.