TriMet Hop Campaign
No surprise, most people find change a little scary. When TriMet was transitioning to a card-based fare system, focus groups confirmed it. Our team’s solution was to make the messenger as friendly as possible. Enter the spokesblobs, whose job it was to show the world, or at least the Portland Metro, how easy riding with the Hop FastPass could be. First task, exploring what the blobs would look like. These were just a few possibilities.
Since Hop is good for any public transit in the area, once the blobs were given an approved look, they were color-coded to the three arms of Portland’s transit providers – TriMet, C-Tran and Portland Streetcar. After that, they started appearing in local ads and in posters at locations where Hop could be purchased and refilled. These pieces told the story of HOP in broad strokes. How to use it, how to fill it and how you’re protected.
The in-house client team developed the landing pages and digital aspects of the campaign, we created clean graffiti that was sprayed around town, built a couple of costumes, and of course some giveaways for local events and fairs like stickers, tattoos and stress balls.
Hop was quickly adopted by the community and, from the positive comments the client received, was a lot less frightened of doing so.