If you listen to
radio, watch television, or read a magazine, you may have seen or
heard these slogans before: "We don't make the products - we just
make them better." "Intel Inside." "Supermarket to the World."
Advertising slogans that speak volumes to consumers are part of the
American lexicon, and the benefits conveyed in those slogans are
easily understood and remembered.
Unfortunately, for the members of
the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America) and
for the thousands of individuals in the intelligent transportation
industry, attempting to explain the benefits of intelligent
transportation systems (ITS) has been a difficult task. Tying
together diverse practices, technologies, and industries under an
umbrella group, such as ITS, has helped bring more focus to ITS
products and services. But we at ITS America still don't have a
simple answer to the perennial question that our members encounter
daily: Just what is intelligent transportation?
"It became apparent in the mid to
late 80s that all of these emerging technologies we were all
working on would be able to increase travel efficiency and capacity
without creating new roads. It was the dawn of a whole new era in
transportation. Unfortunately, we didn't know how to describe it to
anyone other than ourselves," said Dick Braun, ITS America's
treasurer and the executive director of Minnesota's Guidestar
Program.
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Through the use of ITS technologies, such scenes of
traffic gridlock will soon become a thing of the past |
In the early days of ITS America,
Chalmers "Hap" Carr, current chair of the organization's
Communications and Outreach Task Force, faced the difficulty of
describing "intelligent transportation" to laymen. Hap, a former
Air Force man, said his stock phrase to explain intelligent
transportation was to describe it as "the application of aerospace
technology to the ground-vehicle industry."
Debates about how to deal with
this identity crisis have been part of the ITS industry since the
beginning. Over the years, ITS America's Communications and
Outreach Task Force developed various communications media -
videos, brochures, pamphlets, and booklets. Each attempted to
explain how intelligent transportation would enable consumers to
travel smarter and safer. However, as good as these individual
efforts were, overall it was a piecemeal approach to
communications. By the summer of 1996, members of ITS America
realized a coordinated, well-researched national public relations
and advertising campaign was the only way to increase consumer
awareness of ITS benefits.
In setting out to educate the
public, we knew that crafting a national awareness campaign
required four main components:
- Extensive market research on the
message and the audience to fully understand how the public would
respond and to which sectors of the consumer public the message
should be directed.
- Development of a new logo as a
universal symbol (such as "Intel Inside") to which the public could
relate the benefits of intelligent transportation, and development
of a memorable tag line, or slogan, to accompany the
symbol.
- Creative advertising to clearly
and effectively introduce a new ITS logo and tag line and to
communicate benefits.
- Extensive media and public
relations efforts to buttress the advertising, excite local
newspaper editors and television commentators, and generate the
"free media" that would carry the ITS message home to audiences in
ways paid advertising cannot.
We chose the Washington,
D.C.-based public relations and advertising team of The Jefferson
Group Inc. and Henry J. Kaufman & Associates to craft a
program. They proposed a multitiered communications program to
accomplish three goals:
- Elevate the awareness of
intelligent transportation's benefits among the general public,
industry leaders, and public officials.
- Build to a future in which ITS
benefits are so well-understood that the public does not simply
accept, but demands, ITS products and services.
- Engage the transportation
industry as a whole in a cooperative manner to help promote this
new identity of ITS to many different audiences.
The campaign is being led by Bob
Carr, who, during his 18 years in the U.S. House of
Representatives, was a champion of the ITS industry, especially as
the chairman of the House Transportation Appropriations
Subcommittee.
"Much of what ITS is all about is
behind the scenes. It's intended to be that way - the GPS (Global
Positioning System), the toll-collection sensors - all so
user-friendly that the technology's invisible. This is what ITS is
all about - solving [potential] problems before they become
problems. Once consumers clearly grasp how intelligent
transportation can change their lives for the better, we'll be able
to measure the success of any communications outreach," said Bob
Carr, explaining one of the difficulties in communicating ITS
benefits.
Beginning in January 1997, ITS
America's contractors conducted research, developed an ITS industry
logo and tag line, and designed a series of paid advertisements for
the mass media. All of which were unveiled at ITS America's annual
meeting in June.
The key advantage of this
program, unlike any other communications program we've tried
before, is research. We began our research in January at the
Transportation Research Board annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
Delegates were invited to fill out questionnaires and participate
in videotaped interviews. Nearly 500 delegates
responded.
The results were not surprising.
More than 90 percent of the respondents believe the public has
little or no understanding of intelligent transportation or the
benefits of ITS. Almost the same percentage said that - as
deployments were occurring across the nation and as critical public
funding sources, such as the reauthorization of the Intermodal
Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, came up for debate - the
industry needed to advocate ITS with a single, unified
voice.
To encourage industry
participation in this groundbreaking research, we created a
partnership program for ITS America members. The "Research
Associates Program" became a key tool for companies to actively
participate in market research, creative brainstorming, and
communications strategy development. This approach is a key
component of our overall strategy to build strong partnerships
among the many companies and organizations within the ITS
industry.
The main effort of our research
was a series of focus groups held in St. Louis, Atlanta, and
Seattle, where we gauged the depth of public awareness of ITS
benefits and tested some initial creative concepts. Many focus
group participants said they already encountered in-vehicle
navigation systems in rental cars, and some had seen or were
experiencing electronic toll collection, congestion monitoring, and
the like. They understood the benefits these technologies offered
for their day-to-day lives. Participants also responded favorably
to the concept of a well-developed, creative logo representative of
intelligent transportation.
Our partners in the Research
Associates Program were impressed with the initial research
findings. "We had an idea that if consumers were presented with a
slogan or symbol that could immediately conjure up direct benefits
for their own day-to-day transportation, they would interpret that
symbol to mean intelligent transportation. This really is a big
development," said one partner.
With the research findings as our
guide, we launched our test advertising and public relations
campaign last spring. Articles and advertisements began appearing
in national and industrial publications. These articles and ads
featured a new position statement for the campaign - "IntelliTrans:
Bringing new thinking to transportation." Combined with the
specially designed, new campaign logo and in conjunction with ITS
"success stories," this slogan was widely tested among consumers
across the country.
Through a consistent and
coordinated effort over time, we can educate a broad cross section
of the American public about the benefits of ITS. As consumer
awareness leads to public demand, the opportunities for
public-private efforts to design and deploy ITS systems will
multiply. That's the bottom-line benefit for the ITS industry and
for all Americans.
Through the ITS America National
Awareness Campaign, intelligent transportation will no longer be
viewed as a future means to improve mobility and transportation. It
will be viewed and demanded as the intelligent way to meet today's
transportation challenges.
James Costantino is the president and chief executive officer of ITS America.
