Encouraging the use of public transportation in Tel Aviv-Yafo

The Challenge

The Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality’s Transportation Authority knows what everyone knows – the city is jammed, and there is a limit to the number of private vehicles that municipal infrastructure can support. The solution, too, is no secret: Switching (at least partially) to a more substantial form of public transportation that can transport many people simultaneously. But simply giving up your private car in Israel in 2022 was still not taken for granted. So could Tel Aviv promote this shift?

Our Role

The marketing strategy we formulated to deal with the challenge relied on the proven notion of RTBs – Reasons to Believe —  and our insights into the behavioral tendencies of road users. In other words, on the one hand, we compiled all the reasons people have to believe that taking public transportation will improve their situation, such as the existence of public transportation lanes and park-and-ride parking lots, along with high frequency of premium lines, low cost, supportive navigation apps, and more. On the other hand,  We gathered human insights such as the difficulty of residents giving up the comfort of their private vehicles or choosing a means of mobility with longer travel time than a private vehicle. With all this, our marketing strategy sought to empower RTBs and address the barriers we identified through insights. We led the campaign under the slogan: “We shorten the trip at every step,” a direct message that highlights one of the strengths we identified in public transportation in Tel Aviv-Yafo and deals with objections from the field: it actually often gets people to their destination faster than if they were driving a private car.