Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)

Toal Market Ridership

CTA engaged CMRignite to develop and execute a ridership-growth campaign aligned with CTA’s long-term strategic goals. The effort focused on infrequent riders—such as social/relationship riders, tourists, and event-goers—by shifting perceptions of CTA, strengthening confidence in its services, and increasing intent to choose CTA as a preferred transportation option. A key challenge was timing: CTA messaging was not consistently reaching people early enough in their travel-planning process to influence decisions, so the campaign needed to reach audiences upstream to build trust and nudge intent before the moment of choice. 

The strategy applied an audience-centric, Chicago DMA–specific approach to place media where it could deliver total-market impact while still reaching targeted segments actively seeking transportation solutions. The plan aimed to move audiences from awareness to consideration through earlier touchpoints, repeated exposure, and messaging tailored to key segments, events, and channels. Paid media unified programmatic display, streaming audio, CTV, DOOH, and online video in a two-phase model (always-on awareness plus targeted, event-driven activations), while social media and influencer content on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Meta emphasized trip-planning and culturally relevant storytelling—especially with multilingual creative—to reinforce CTA’s value at high-intent decision moments. 

Results indicated broad reach and strong engagement, including 44.5 million impressions and 8.7 million people reached, alongside 50K clicks, 2.9 million influencer engagements, and 209K+ website page views that drove 90K new users. High-intent activity suggested meaningful consideration and planning behavior, with 117K “Plan a Trip” page views (nearly 60% of site traffic) and 50K airport page views following campaign exposure. Performance exceeded benchmarks across multiple tactics, with sports and cultural sponsorships standing out (e.g., Bulls-aligned creative at a 0.48% CTR) and on-site integrations demonstrating real-world impact (e.g., Lincoln Park Zoo Adults Night Out transit usage increasing from 18% to 32%), establishing a data-backed foundation to scale high-performing approaches into 2026.