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Case Study: Pokémon Go Social Media Campaign This social media campaign for Cherriots, the transit district in Salem, Oregon, won a national advertising award from the American Public Transportation Association. It received first place in the category “Best Marketing and Communications to Increase Ridership or Sales.”

Target Audience Facebook and Twitter users under the age of 34, i.e. millennials and teens, living in the communities Cherriots serves.

Situation/Challenge Although millennials and teens are prolific social media users, they were not very active on Cherriots social media pages. Cherriots’ most active Facebook followers were between the ages of 45 and 54. (Twitter does not provide this level of analytics.) Several real-world issues made it difficult to provide lighthearted messages on social media. The transit district has not been able provide weekend service since 2009. Last year the district’s ballot measure to restore weekend service failed. The tension in the community spilled over into social media, and positive messages often received a backlash of negativity. The overnight popularity of the Pokémon Go game provided an opportunity to have lighthearted, fun social media interactions.

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Strategy/Objective The objective of the campaign was to engage with the target audience in a fun, humorous way, and to encourage them to use public transit to find Pokémon. I promoted the Facebook post and tweets to people under 34 in Cherriots’ service area. I held a contest on social media to win portable phone battery packs, a coveted giveaway because the Pokémon Go game drains battery life. To enter the contest, people snapped screenshots of Pokémon at a Cherriots transit center, at a bus stop or on a bus. Then they tweeted the photo to Cherriots, or posted it as a comment on the Facebook post. My team created a sandwich board advertising the Pokémon Gym located at the downtown transit center, named Galaxy Gym. We also dropped a lure at the downtown transit center to attract more Pokémon.

Results/Impact The contest received 57 entries, and I gave away five battery packs. The Facebook post reached more than 22,500 people. The Cherriots Facebook page received more than 50 new page likes. The demographic most engaged by the Facebook post was men between the ages of 18 and 24. That’s a first on

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Cherriots’ Facebook page. The post also garnered no negative comments, which is rare. My Pokémon-themed tweets were seen more than 67,000 times, and resulted in more than 16,000 interactions: likes, retweets, link clicks and comments. A local newspaper and blog covered the Pokémon Go contest. The tweets generated praise for Cherriots from the Oregon Department of Energy, a local author and other transit districts. Altogether, this was a successful campaign to engage with millennials and teens, and encourage them to ride the bus.

Facebook  and  Twitter  Examples  

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