Executive Summary

Since late 2021, Transport for Ireland (TFI) have fully integrated the Leap Card in the Dublin area; allowing 90 mins of travel across any combination of Dublin Bus, Luas and most DART, commuter rail and Go-Ahead Ireland buses for a flat fare.

With the public having to face cost-of-living, inflation and mortgage hikes, they were having trouble understanding all of TFI’s work. It was apparent the TFI 90-minute fare needed a boost. Any large media campaign can boost awareness, however we knew we needed to make the fare far more relatable and as tangible as possible that's where audio came into play.

An audio partnership with 98FM put communications into the users’ perspective to highlight how far they can travel using the offering and put them in the proverbial driving seat of how far they could push the Leap Card and the 90minute bounds.

This contributed to a 13% awareness growth about the offering in post-campaign as well as claimed behaviour of using more transport methods.

Background& Objectives

In 2021, TFI launched their best value-for-money fare – the 90-minute fare. This allows Leap Card passengers to switch an unlimited amount of times between different modes of transport within90 mins, whilst only paying one fare within Dublin.

The initiative made the interchange between transport services seamless and more affordable, whilst promoting a more efficient public transport system in the capital. However, awareness levels were beginning to dip – from 61% (2022) to57% (2023). To encourage a more sustainable city and greater usage of transport links, NTA needed to relaunch the 90 Minute fare in a memorable fashion.

Data Collection & Integration

The clear role for communications was to make how the TFI 90-minute fare works easier to understand. Relevance was important but we wanted to push the boundaries and make this relatability feel tangible.

Proprietary research from GroupM examined media consumption habits for our core audience, with a deep dive into the different habits and rituals of everyday life. While audio is an incredibly important channel, 24% of all adults listen to the radio while driving in morning. 98FM’s The Breakfast Show was the perfect opportunity to reach Dublin commuters and show them the benefits of city’s public transport links, at mass reach and high frequency.

Mix: Design and Methodology

Our target was to achieve a 70% awareness rate, however we wanted to go beyond a large broadcast media campaign and delve deeper into the power of audio. We needed toi dentify potential barriers to the 90-minute fare, and how we could best communicate the benefits of a more integrated transport system with our audience.

Research unearthed that while nearly 60% of the greater Dublin area commuters were awareof the fare cap, only 43% claimed to have used additional public transport links because of it. There were two key reasons identified for this: (1)Commuters did not realise how far they could travel using the 90-minute fare,(2) Commuters are so engrained in their routine that they didn’t believe this tariff was applicable to them.

We had a clear communications challenge ahead of us – this was no longer an awareness driving campaign, but one that needed to drive relevancy and understanding.

Reaching people while they were travelling to work or commuting elsewhere was key as that would reach them while they were stuck in traffic and showcase the benefits of public transport.

Execution

We partnered with 98FM to put public at the heart of the campaign. We wanted them to get involved to both show and see the 90-minute fare at work in real life. To do this, we ran an on-air competition each morning in which a location was selected by a listener and the station personality had to reach the location using (multiple!) public transport links. This put into perspective how far people could travel within 90 minutes on Dublin transport and if our in-field journeyman completed the challenge (which he usually did!), the listener won 2€90 Leap Cards.

This ran along with live traffic bulletin updates across 4 weeks, reiterating in the benefits of using public transport alongside live mentions and promotions on98FM. We also used the on air competition to play out on 98FM’s Instagram inform of reels and competition providing additional reach to the campaign.

Once understanding and relevancy was established, we ran a radio spot campaign to build on our growing awareness scores

Results

Awareness driving was always going to be a key communications metric for this campaign. Our 98FM partnership reached 130,000 Dubliners and our radio campaign another730,000. With an established awareness rate of 57%, we achieved 70% awareness in the Dublin region post campaign. It’s rare for a regional offering to have an awareness rate of over 60%, highlighting its success.

But did it drive relatability and ultimately, usage?

Our on-air competitions saw over 1,000 entries across the 2 weeks surpassing the benchmark for entries in on-air competitions on 98FM. An incredibly engaging format.

Our post-campaign research also showed the change in perceptions and reported usage.

- +12pptsstated they benefitted from using the TFI 90 min fare.

- +9pptsstated they took extra public transport journeys because of the free transfers included within the TFI 90 min fare. This has directly benefited NTA in terms of a higher number of people using public transport.

Preliminary figures from the NTA show that there was a 20% increase in Dublin Bus passengers YoY and a 25% YoY increase in Luas passengers, making it the busiest year ever for the NTA ahead of 2019.

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