West Yorkshire Combined Authority: Integrated Transport

Have your say. It’s Your Journey.

West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s integrated transport vision goes beyond getting West Yorkshire’s residents from A to B. The combined authority believe that every trip matters whether that be getting to school, college or nursery, commuting to work, connecting with friends, shopping or exploring the region.

WYCA’s integrated transport vision is shaped around a clean and connected region, making the region’s transport system much easier, both to use and to understand. Their vision believes that everyday journeys should give people more chances in life and make our region a fairer place to be. The West Yorkshire Combined Authority see an integrated transport system as a solution to road congestion and overcrowded public transport which pose particular problems for uses.

The consultation forms a beginning to the wide set of improvements planned for train, bus, walking, cycling and driving infrastructure within West Yorkshire. The Ark Media's role was to engage as wide an audience as possible within the West Yorkshire region.

The York Road D48 screen with a selection of the artworks used, ensuring representation and relatability within the messaging to encourage people to participate with the consultation.

Objectives

The primary objectives of this campaign were to:

- Raise awareness of the public consultation across the West Yorkshire region

- Reach as wide an audience as possible including specific demographics, which are usually underrepresented in public consultation responses

Digital screens provided 10 million impressions, and during winter months their illumination creates a striking visual to catch attention.

Strategy and Execution

Ensuring engagement with the consultation on a topic which doesn't immediately resonate with communities was an important consideration to the whole strategy of the integrated transport campaign. This made an eye-catching visual poster and interesting audio adverts paramount to driving responses to the consultation.

With this in mind, the media we used created a high impact campaign, airing adverts on Heart Yorkshire, a major radio presence in the region and ensuring a presence on not just major roads, with digital billboards but across the transport network with bus and rail posters. 

Our strategy included:

• Bus rear advertising, utilising depots across the region whose buses service the Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield local authorities.
• Static rail sheets positioned at both destination and commuter stations such as Bradford, Brighouse, Castleford, Huddersfield, Keighley, Saltaire, Outwood, Shipley and Halifax, to target frequent public transport users at places with high dwell times.
• Adverts on commercial radio including Heart Yorkshire, reaching an audience of 439k adult listeners, to reach a mass audience with instruction on how to participate in the consultation.
• Digital Out-Of-Home advertising, in order to deploy the different creatives and considering its eye-catching presence during winter, in numerous areas with significant traffic including the A650 and A653.

The Integrated Transport Journey

Integrated transport as a term is unrelatable and jargonistic, with people unlikely to respond to it. By using "Where are you going today?" with every day people doing every day activities, we created a campaign which people could respond to. By pairing this with the simple call to action, "have your say" we created a powerful campaign which offered the story behind integrated transport and a reason for people to share their views on the future of public transport.

The Ark Media created a campaign which reached people in the right way to promote why they should share their views during the consultation. We utilised people which represented the community and as such got the community to engage with the consultation. We placed the campaign in unmissable positions to drive awareness on the upcoming public transport changes.

An integrated transport system offers an exciting future to West Yorkshire, as it drives connectivity and creates reliable, affordable and environmental transport for the region which will bring benefits to the community and economy. Through campaigns, like this one, the public will be brought along the journey of the transformation of public transport throughout West Yorkshire.

Bus Rears brought 1.7 million impressions, and there was a 49-day average overshow across the 71 bus rears used, bringing additional impressions and reach for no further cost. Rail 4 sheets delivered an additional 582,910 impressions over a 2 week period.