Research Triangle Park, NC (Sept. 24, 2018) – GoTriangle’s Ride the Bus rap video, written and created to help educate the community in a fun way about the public transit experience, has won one of eight national AdWheel Grand Awards.
The video, along with three other GoTriangle marketing campaigns, previously won first place in GoTriangle’s division of the American Public Transportation Association’s Marketing & Communications 2018 Awards.
This year, more than 100 judges reviewed more than 300 entries across the divisions, which are based on ridership numbers. The 55 first-place winners were narrowed down to eight Grand Award winners, representing the very best efforts to educate the public or to increase ridership.
Marketing and Communications Director Mike Charbonneau accepted the national grand award on behalf of GoTriangle and participated in a panel discussion with other winners during the APTA Annual Meeting in Nashville on Monday.
“I am so proud of our creative and tremendously talented team for their work on this project and their dedication to keeping our community informed and engaged every day,” Charbonneau says. “It is truly an honor to be recognized by our peers and to partner with others across the nation in a shared mission of creating greater access and opportunities for all through public transit.”
In its announcement of GoTriangle’s award, APTA said, “Because it’s a fun music video rather than simply an instruction manual, the project appealed to more residents, reaching more than 50,000 people on Facebook alone. The video currently has more than 21,000 views, 200 reactions, 40 comments and 120 shares.”
The video launched in June 2017 as part of National Dump the Pump day. Even a year later, people still ask about it, says Samantha Allen, GoTriangle’s web and social media specialist who wrote the rap song.
“I think it really has longevity as a resource, especially with so many people moving to the Triangle every single day,” Allen says. “If we show them the benefits of transit right when they get here, we could really create a habit of transit commuting early on.”
GoTriangle hopes to continue using the video, shot and produced by GoTriangle videographer Stefan Walz, as an introduction to the brand and to the simplicity of a bus commute. The video uses only GoTriangle employees and their friends, which kept production costs below $500.
“Knowing we had a limited budget, we had to work creatively,” Walz says. “With storyboard in hand, we set aside one hot Saturday in June to record our rap video. With the help of our rappers and transit ambassadors playing extras, we knocked out the majority of shooting in one five-hour session. We couldn’t be more proud to win a grand national award for our efforts to get more of our neighbors riding transit.”