Editorial + Multimedia Communications
Public sector
Metropolitan Transportation Authority New York City Transit
The MTA New York City was about to break ground on a project, which would rehabilitate and improve a stretch of a subway line that connects Manhattan and Brooklyn—and require it to dramatically change the commutes of 275,000 daily New Yorkers. But besides the massive impact, user research showed that a significant percentage of riders didn’t know how the project would benefit them or even how much of the line would be impacted. This came at a moment of historically low levels of trust with MTA customers.
The Strategy
Create frequent, helpful communications on a variety of channels to reach all customers—including those with a penchant for knowing every nerdy transit detail. “The L Project Weekly” email newsletter became the centerpiece source content for the project, telling human interest stories about the project’s female engineers one week, to giving an explainer on the train’s power source systems the next. As the primary source of information from the agency to customers (and oftentimes the media), it also set the tone for the project—the voice was one of a sometimes punchy yet always earnest teacher, whose primary job was to build clarity amidst extremely complex engineering and political situations.
The Tactics
email marketing
content marketing
multimedia communications
brand journalism
Early newsletters focused on providing trip-planning information in a variety of formats—written, visual (maps) and video.
Newsletter content was designed to bring clarity to technical information, so customers could better understand how the project benefited them personally.
As the centerpiece content for the project, the newsletter gave customers all the information they needed in one place, including all of the ways they could get in touch with the MTA throughout.