Voices of Brussels

The COVID-19 lockdown was hard on many levels for STIB. The business collapsed (-90%) and STIB risked to lose loyal users and suffer brand damage.

This Effie case wanted to bring STIB's purpose of bringing Brussels' people together to life, in hard circumstances. By strengthening our emotional bond and creating positive word-of-mouth through earned media, we avoided massive refunds.

• Challenge: Avoid forced temporary stop in usage turns into loss in loyalty
• Strategy (Idea): Bring our purpose - bringing Brusseleirs together - to life
• Strategy (Execution): STIB connected travelers by replacing physical traveling with emotional journeys
• Strategy (Touchpoints): Replace reach of owned media with earned media
• Results: A stronger connection with STIB's role in the life of Brusseleirs and their city improved STIB's image, engagement, usage intention and loyalty.

1. Challenge & context

Commercial situation

From the start of the Corona crisis, public transport was portrayed as dangerous. Mid-March 2020, STIB usage dropped by a staggering 90%. The worst thing that could probably happen to a brand is to ask its users not to use the brand anymore. And that's exactly what STIB had to do for months. STIB immediately saw this negative tone-of-voice translate to social media: people complained they paid for a service they weren't using.

This drop meant STIB missed out on revenue. Also: many travelers have a fixed subscription. If they start reimbursing their money, STIB could have a major cash flow problem (not having new revenues and having to reimburse customers). Knowing STIB would in 2020 already lose millions in revenue due to selling less tickets and subscribers not renewing their season ticket, STIB needed to avoid that more subscribers would ask their money back.

Target audience

Season ticket holders from Brussels that didn't use STIB anymore because of COVID-19 restrictions.

We focused all our marketing efforts on Brusseleirs. Their share of voice is considerable: 80% of STIB's season ticket holders are Brusseleirs, adding up to 62% of STIB's revenues from season tickets.

2. Objectives

Business: stop reimbursements

As soon as lockdown hit, complaints concerning reimbursements escalated: 5 x more reimbursement inquiries compared to March 2019!

If the number of reimbursements due would increase massively, in a time of 90% of business loss, this would lead to a financial disaster.

• OBJECTIVE
  # Reimbursements of Brusseleirs not higher in 2020 than in 2019.

Behavior: have Brusseleirs talk positively about STIB

Our business objective of stopping the demands of reimbursement, could only succeed if we influenced behavior in the sense of limiting complaints. Perception and willingness to forgive STIB was probably the only thing we could influence, since we had no impact on travel restrictions.

• OBJECTIVE
  Have Brusseleirs talk positively about STIB
  1. Make positive sentiment on social media bigger than negative (for the first time since July 2018).
  2. Improve NPS: 2020 ≥ 2019
  3. Brusseleirs had to keep on considering STIB after the crisis
     Usage intention: 2020 ≥ 2019:
     a. The future is using STIB more often : 2020 ≥ 2019
     b. STIB is a transport company of which I see myself being a customer in the future ≥ 2019

Brand: limit brand damage

End of 2019, STIB reached its best image results ever. STIB hoped to limit brand damage by improving brand perception and its connection with Brusseleirs, the key audience of Voices of Brussels.

• OBJECTIVE
  Build stronger connections with STIB
  1. 2020: STIB plays a big part in my life in the city ≥ 2019
  2. 2020: STIB is a transport company that I would miss more than other transport companies, if it came to disappear ≥ 2019

3. Insights & strategic idea

Insight

STIB's customer weren't missing their daytime commute, they were missing what STIB enables them to do.

Strategic idea

Bring STIB's purpose, bringing Brusseleirs together, to life (in times of isolation and social distancing) and show STIB cares for them.

In order to maintain the relationship – aka brand loyalty – in times the product is inaccessible, it was key for STIB to improve the relation with Brusseleirs by working on a stronger emotional bond.

STIB's long-term strategy is built on spreading the love for Brussels and its inhabitants, what we translated into a simple baseline: Brussels, It's all of us! More than just a baseline, it's also our purpose: to bring the diverse people of Brussels together (1) to enjoy life in the city (2). That purpose was heavily hit during the March 2020 lockdown, when bringing people together was the one thing that was forbidden.

4. Execution

Creative strategy: turn unused busses into carriers of emotion

The idea behind 'Voices of Brussels' was bringing STIB's purpose of bringing Brussels' people together to life. We created a bus that brought heartwarming spoken messages to people's homes, thus connecting our travelers emotionally, with the aim of leaving a positive feeling. We chose to combine a digital and a personal, physical experience.

Media strategy: Replace reach of owned media by earned media

Without extra budget for paid media, and management nudging to save money seen the excess losses, STIB needed to find a way to replace the reach via owned media. So, our strategy focused on earned media.

By using STIB's own asset (a pimped bus) to bring the message to the recipients and gathering entries through its own social media (Facebook Messenger), STIB managed to connect with the inhabitants of Brussels in an innovative approach and mainly driving on earned media: PR and word-of-mouth. Engagement on STIB's social media peaked, without paid media.

4. Results

Results

Business: we stopped claims for reimbursements

• OBJECTIVE
  # Reimbursements of Brusseleirs not higher in 2020 than in 2019

Behavior

• OBJECTIVE
  Have Brusseleirs talk positively about STIB to boost consideration

BRUSSELEIRS TALK ABOUT STIB POSITIVELY, DURING THE CAMPAIGN HAVE A POSITIVE RATIO DURING THE CAMPAIGN
Engagement on STIB's social media peaked, without paid media. The peak lasted the whole campaign.

Sentiment about STIB on social media was highly negative before Voices of Brussels. This changed entirely during the 2 weeks of the campaign. Having more positive than negative sentiments is unique for STIB.

BRUSSELEIRS TALK ABOUT STIB POSITIVELY, EVEN DURING CRISIS NPS: 2020 ≥ 2019
STIB wanted to uphold its reputation by influencing the opinions of Brusseleirs. Result NPS: +9. This even improved STIB's overall NPS (+3) due to the share of voice of Brusseleirs.

Brusseleirs keep considering STIB after the crisis Usage intention indicators: 2020 ≥ 2019.

1. The future is using STIB more often: 2020 ≥ 2019
2. STIB is a transport company of which I see myself being a customer in the future ≥ 2019

BRAND

• OBJECTIVE
  Build a stronger connection with STIB

1. 2020 = STIB plays a big part in my life in the city ≥ 2019
   STIB didn't only reach its objective to maintain its current connection with Brusseleirs, it developed even further. (+7)
2. 2020 = STIB is a transport company that I would miss more than other transport companies, if it came to disappear ≥ 2019.
   STIB went further and developed a long-term relationship with its main target, Brusseleirs, which improved the overall score.

5. Conclusion

As marketing professionals, it's nice to have presentations with a clear mission and purpose. But what's even nicer, is to see how it can guide brands through its darkest times. STIB managed to keep on communicating on what makes them relevant in times where almost every single reason to believe was under pressure. We reinvented the brand experience during this crisis. It's the ultimate stress test for brand and purpose: does it hold when people can't use your product or service anymore? It's easy to use purpose when all goes well. But it's only in a crisis that a purpose shows how crucial it is. Creativity brought STIB's purpose to life and leveraged momentum in STIB's advantage.