Seattle Department of Transportation Communications Plan

SITUATION ANALYSIS

SWOT Analysis:

Strengths:

• Accessible bike paths throughout Seattle, making a downtown commute possible (not all cities have these)

• Places to lock up your bike easily found

• Biking map offered by SDOT, online and available in public places like libraries

• Good biking section on SDOT website with info an easy-start bicycling guide, opportunities to get involved with the bicycle advisory board, information about current bike lanes (where they are, what improvements are being made on them, and what is planned for the future), rules of the road, how to keep your bike safe, and data on bike riders in Seattle

  • Gives bikers or website visitors insight into gov plans for the future, makes them feel involved and informed

Weaknesses:

• Aside from the SDOT website, social media presence for biking in Seattle is very low

  • People are not aware of the full extent of resources available or bikers or what the current efforts are to improve conditions for bikers in the city

  • This info is available on the SDOT website, but since many people get their news/info from social media they feel uninformed about the updates

• While there are bike lanes in Seattle, there are problems with them:

  • The lanes aren’t always protected, so it is easy for cars to hit people biking

  • The lanes don’t always connect to each other, so a biker’s ride will be on a mix of bike lanes and open street. This puts the biker at risk of getting in an accident with a vehicle

Opportunities:

• Portland is ranked higher than Seattle for number of biking commuters and has very similar weather and general culture to Seattle. This may help Seattle government organizations to take note of and borrow some ways Portland has such a high bike ridership.

• With a perhaps major decrease in Seattle public transportation due to the new initiative 976, there may be more residents forced to find other options if their typical method of transportation is unavailable or cut back. Biking could be an option for commuters to take up.

Threats:

• Initiative 976 recently passed in the Washington State elections. This will limit all car tab fees to $30.00 and this is estimated to be a $4 billion gap in funding to state and local agencies including Soundtransit. This will greatly impact funding to all transportation in Seattle and many future projects will likely go on hold when the initiative goes into effect on December 5th.

  • Mayor Jenny Durkan is planning to file a lawsuit for the city of Seattle against this initiative

AUDIENCE ANALYSIS

Geographics:

• Seattle, WA USA

• Urban area, big cities

Demographics:

• Age: 24-40

• Gender: Females, LGBTQ+

• Educated/Occupation: College education, women who are commuting to their workplace

• Household size:1-2

• Ethnicity: All cultural/ethnic groups

Psychographics:

• Social class: Middle class income

• Personality Traits:

  • Active, busy women

  • Motivated, hard workers

  • Environmentally aware

  • Engaged in the community

  • Social, curious, friendly

• Habits:

  • They live a busy, active lifestyle

  • They commute to work throughout the city

  • Women without children, commute on their own

  • Small households, single women or women in partnerships

  • Regularly engage with reusable products or participate in citywide recycling and compost programs

  • Might have vegetarian or vegan diets

• Social behavior:

  • Women who are local to Seattle, are engaged in the community

  • Women who read or watch the news, keep up with events going on in Seattle

• Relationship with issue:

  • Bike recreationally and occasionally commute to places via bicycle

  • Interested in biking as a way to commute, but needs more education and confidence with biking

• Political/Activist Involvement:

  • Environmentally aware, passionate

  • Sustainable living - wanting to do more to reduce their carbon footprint

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Women are not an active part of Seattle biking culture.

CAMPAIGN STATEMENT

Make Seattle one of the top three US cities with the most bicycle commuters per capita.

MESSAGE

Motivational

• Bicycling to work is a known way to commute but we want to initiate action and see more Seattle locals use this commuting method.

• We want to remind our audience that biking to school/work/places is an efficient, fun, and environmentally impactful way to commute for ALL Seattleites.

• To motivate and educate young Seattle women to change their attitudes towards bike culture and try commuting via bicycle.

Primary Message

• Biking to work is beneficial because of time, exercise, cost, and community participation. Everyone and anyone can use biking as a way of commuting, there are no limits in using this form of transportation.

Secondary Message

• Using qualitative data from our focus group, we found that people were interested in biking. Despite being intimidated by a few factors of biking, the group showed interest in biking as transportation and were intrigued to learn more about how to do so. Quotes started with, “I’d like to bike but…”. The interest is there, there is a slight hesitation.

Positioning Statement

• For local, Seattle women looking to save time, money, and the planet, biking to work encourages and fits these goals. Unlike other forms of transportation, biking to work offers active participation in one’s lifestyle and community.

MEASURABLE OBJECTIVES

1. Make the message clear that Seattle bikers are diverse by gaining 5,000 followers to the Bikers of Seattle Instagram account. This engagement will show that people are aware of the account and its message.

2. Pull data from local bike shops and craigslist to see an increase in bike sales by 3% by Fall 2020.

3. Increase use of Seattle bike routes by 10% by Fall 2020.

4. Increase the level of knowledge of our target audience surrounding best practices of commuting via bike to work by Fall 2020.

STRATEGY

1. Create Seattle’s first social media account exclusive to biking.

• Generate more awareness for both the high numbers of people commuting via bicycle, and also showcase the diversity of the bikers.

• Increase awareness of Seattle bike routes and inform the public about safe commuting options.

1. Host a special event to engage the biking community and potential bike commuters.

• Encourage and build confidence around bike culture and bike education.

• Increase female bike participation and encourage riders to support local businesses

1. Utilize out-of-home advertising to draw more attention to the bike-to-work campaign.

2. Have Seattle workplaces directly involved and invested in the bike-to-work campaign.

TACTICS

1. Create an Instagram account that profiles real people biking in Seattle, @BikersofSeattle. The owners of this account would walk around Seattle, stop bikers and take their picture, and get a quote from them and put it as the caption. (Similar to the Humans of New York Instagram/campaign.)

• This is a native account with the goal of humanizing all the different kinds of bikers in Seattle.

  1. The goal of this account is to show viewers that there is no “one way” to bike in Seattle; not everyone who bikes in Seattle looks like the traditional biking type referenced in the focus group.

     1. According to focus group insights, the traditional Seattle bike commuter is male, wealthy, educated bike maintenance, busy, and has a busy, successful career downtown.

  2. Use the hashtag #realseattlebikers on every post to build more reach.

• Promote this account on the SDOT Instagram account (@seattledot) and on the SDOT website.

• Feature a minimum of one biker per week while account is being built up, increase posts as number of followers grows.

1. Collaborate with Local Female and Queer Artists to create a series of painted bike paths in the city of Seattle.

   1. To make bike commuting more safe and accessible, we will recruit local artists to paint specific stretches of a designated bike route, similar to the SODO track mural project.

   2. SDOT will also partner with Art Primo, a local art supply shop and gallery that specializes in street art.

   3. The painted bike paths will engage with the entire general population, in addition to the specific targeted group.

   4. Will provide a local news opportunity, as well as a number of social media moments.

   5. In addition to the physical bike paths, we will also create digital graphics of the bike routes to post on the SDOT website and social media pages.

2. Femme Bikers Open House: Free event in park with women/femmes teaching people how to fix their bike, maybe have bike polo people involved, partner with local bike shops, attendants get discount there

   1. Reach out to Seattle Bike Polo team and collab to create a once a month encouraging community meetup to learn how to tune up bikes, ask questions, participate in bike polo game. Cal Anderson Park in Capitol Hill is where the Bike Polo team meets twice a week, the Cal Anderson courts and lawn would be a good spacious area for this.

   2. Bike polo has an active Facebook page where they could help promote these meetups to their followers, where those can then be shared.

   3. ‘Bike Shop Cafe’ located in Capitol Hill on Union could help sponsor this event because of its convenient location and wide biking audience. They serve delicious food which could be offered at the meet up or discounts can be available for those who come expand their biking education.

   4. Because a large reason for the lack of biking is intimidation, collaborating with a local biking group could ease that tension and build confidence. Making sure we stay focused on encouraging Seattle women to commute via bike, we would invite women/femmes from bike polo and The Bike Cafe to lead this meetup.

3. Inter-Organization Biking Competition: Start a month-long competition during the month of national bike to work day between companies to see which team can log the highest number of hours commuting via bike to their workplace.

   1. To encourage camaraderie and healthy competition between downtown businesses and organizations. Create an online link where participants and organizations can go to log their personal hours as well as track their status compared to other teams. The team that collectively accounts for the highest number of hours biked to and from their workplace.

   2. This inter workplace activity may be an event that would create some earned media opportunities such as a piece in a local paper or blog such as Curbed Seattle, the Seattle Transit Blog, or the West Seattle Blog.

   3. This competitive environment will create an opportunity for people in the workplace to have a higher goal and an incentive to bike not only for themselves but for their team.

      1. This would also increase the level of knowledge for how to bike to work, what their route will look like, and some tips and tricks surrounding the event.

   4. The winning team would receive a subsidized pass to use rideshare bikes for free in Seattle for one month.

EVALUATION

1. Secure 5,000 followers for the Bikers of Seattle Instagram account.

   1. Questions to consider:

      1. How much interaction do these followers have on the account?

         1. Measure this using Instagram analytics.

      2. Is this account getting noticed by any other social media accounts or social media influencers?

      3. Have numbers of bikes in Seattle monthly increased from last year’s numbers since the creation of this account?

      4. Is the account getting noticed by any local news sources?

2. Increase awareness of Seattle bike routes by 10% by Fall 2020.

   1. Measure media impressions of social media content featuring painted bike paths.

   2. Conduct surveys using targeted marketing to determine what percentage of the population is aware of or uses the bike paths.

3. Increase audience participation by 5% each monthly Femme Bike meetup.

   1. Questions to consider:

      1. Did sales at The Bike Cafe increase throughout the Bike meetup time period?

         1. Measure this by collecting sales data from the bike shop

      2. Have the number of female participants on the bike polo team increased?

4. Increase the level of knowledge of our target audience surrounding best practices of commuting via bike to work by 10% by Fall 2020.

   1. Conduct a before and after focus group in organizations and with different teams that participated in the biking competition. Gauge the difference between how people engaged with and learned from their experience as participants in this competition

Group Plan and Presentation created for APCO Worldwide with Isabel Cunningham, Catherine Schultz, Katie Stewart & Lila Zuckermann