Background

Courtesy on board of public transport is an old talk and of low interest level. Yet it is affecting all of us since we have to commute every day to work or to school. The situation in Hong Kong is further intensified as there is a daily influx of 200,000 tourists. The heavily loaded public transport is so crowded that any argument on board could result in inconvenient traffic delay or, even worse, has the risk of jeopardising safety of all passengers. Hence, there is an eminent need to communicate to most passengers to arrest the deteriorating situation, with the help of a courtesy campaign. Therefore, this campaign aims to educate passengers about courteous manners on board and through that, leads to audiences' attitudinal change and foster a harmonious transit environment.

Describe the creative idea

We want to encourage “perspective taking” rather than lecturing on this old topic about courtesy behaviour. We aimed at provoking passengers to take care of themselves while also considering others. To achieve that, a 2 minute online video portraying 12 seemingly exaggerated yet very realistic scenes was produced. A well-respected celebrity – Deanie Ip was appointed to reprimand the wrong acts of passenger on board, sarcastically yet memorably. Deanie Ip is a major factor of bringing this campaign to life. Her unique commenting style and dialogue spoke on behalf of most users of public transport has touched the sweet spot of most audience. She is also a genuine user of public transport in Hong Kong and shared the bad feelings of encountering inconsiderate passengers. She has, in fact, pointed out some passengers’ bad behaviours in real life. Hence, the video resonates with audiences, making it effective and memorable.

Describe the strategy

To reach the target audience, which is the general public that will use public transport for daily commuting in Hong Kong, both traditional media as well as online media are employed in this campaign. Hong Kong, with 6.4M active internet users, makes social media channels effective media to reach our target audiences, especially youngsters and adults, whom are more attracted by sarcastic and humorous content. Therefore, a 2-minutes video conveying the main message clearly with a humorous touch was uploaded to YouTube channels and Facebook pages, the two most active social media platforms in Hong Kong. Not to ignore the 6.5M television population, television spots were also utilised to broadcast a 30-seconds version of the video. Out-of-home media such as MTR poster and digital panels on buses also played a supplementary role and served as reminder of our key messages.

Describe the execution

This campaign was first released on February 25, 2019 with the 2 minute online video featuring 12 scenes with Deanie on board of different public transports. Within 48 hours, the awareness has been driven from online to offline traditional media receiving wide free coverage on local newspapers and radio programs. The 30 sec TV API was a cut-down version for repeated frequency in the traditional TV medium and for reaching the other audience that have not yet been touched by social media channels. Posters at out-of-home media and buses served as reminder of the campaign and sustained awareness. The success factor of this campaign actually relies on the enormous amount of earned media. Not a single dollar was spent on paid media, yet a reach of 13 million was achieved, with up to 99.74% contributed by earned media, no doubt making the campaign talk of the town.

List the results

This is an awareness campaign and there are 3 core metrics to measure the result. The first metric is “reach/impression” which can be counted by the followers or fans of the social media platforms mentioning or posting the video. The aggregated online reach of this video is 13.15M. The second metric is the “views” which is the actual delivery of the video in online channels. The total accumulated reach of the video in online channel is 3M. The third core metric is the total engagement, which is the sum of comments, shares and reactions. This campaign's total engagement adds up to 180K, thus rendering an overall engagement rate of 1.37%, 15 times the global median of social media platform engagement rate (0.09%).