ReliaRide Medical Transportation

Strong positioning yields strong branding when implemented with discipline and care

The leaders at Scenic View Transportation showed an unusual degree of candor. They came to us acknowledging that their name was a hindrance. Coming across more like a nice tour through Amish Country rather than a medical transportation provider, the client knew it was time to make a change.

A family-oriented nonprofit, Scenic View Transportation started with the goal to be the best, most reliable, most professional, and friendliest ambulette service provider in Ohio (and perhaps beyond). The company established an excellent reputation by carefully screening its drivers and office staff, insisting that customers get the best service.

The company provides what’s called non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) to hospitals, rehab and skilled nursing facilities, outpatient surgery, local clinics, doctors’ offices, physical therapy, sleep studies, pharmacy trips, legal consultations, eye exams, and X-rays. The company experienced amazing growth, even despite the name handicap and almost no marketing. Leadership decided to accelerate growth by beginning a marketing program and expanding geographically.

Scenic View Transportation enlisted America’s #1 Positioning Ad Agency, Innis Maggiore, for a complete rebranding due to name confusion. We recommended a leadership position and coined the new name ReliaRide™ Medical Transportation. Employing a catchy alliteration with the double Rs served to make the name more memorable. It’s simple word math: Reliable + Ride = ReliaRide.

We next designed a new logo featuring a stylized heart shape formed with a dotted line to represent a blessed path from point A to point B and back again. Innis Maggiore also created everything from an identity package and vehicle graphics to a TV spot, video, collateral, direct marketing, and displays.

A new website was to act as a lead source, unlike the then-existing website that was virtually invisible to Google due to bad and insufficient SEO. We created a bright and cheerful experience along with the comforting theme, “You’re riding with friends.” Before any of the marketing was deployed to the public, an internal launch took place to impress internal audiences and avoid grumbling. A gathering brought all employees together to reveal the new brand and distribute swag such as shirts and hats — and everyone was thrilled with the rebranding.

Innis Maggiore public relations experts communicated the new identity to prospective customers, riders, community partners, and media. The company’s owner was interviewed on leading radio stations in two area markets; several newspapers published feature articles; and the region’s major business news publication, Crain’s Cleveland Business, profiled the company and the rebranding. To date, Innis Maggiore’s PR efforts showed a Critical Mention publicity value of nearly $250,000 and a PR Newswire potential audience of 154.3 million. Driver applicants grew by four times, and ride requests increased 22%.

In addition, the agency created a postcard to explain the name change and its rationale to riders, which also featured a promotional overlay to encourage them to write Google Reviews. Each participant gained a sweepstakes entry for the chance to win a gift card. In the three-month effort, 208 riders wrote a review — and every one but one gave a 5-star review!

SARTA

Together, so much is possible

Saying thanks can make all the difference. Since 2012, Innis Maggiore has conducted many campaigns and projects for the Stark Area Regional Transit Authority (SARTA) to thank riders, drivers, corporations, and organizations. After a successful and award-winning campaign commemorating its 25th year — which we themed, “Happy SARTAversary!” — Innis Maggiore worked with the SARTA team to devote the following year to spotlighting how its services help real people to demonstrate the many aspects of how SARTA positively impacts the community in so many ways.

We named it “We Ride Together,” which was intended to communicate the double meaning of SARTA’s literal service of driving Stark County residents where they need to go, together with the more inspirational message that we’re all in this together and SARTA is always here to help our community.

The campaign was entirely devoted to riders, letting them tell their own stories in their own words — many whom could not otherwise get to their workplace, school, doctor’s appointments, or stores without SARTA’s valuable service. As SARTA’s transportation marketing agency, Innis Maggiore was proud to record and deploy heartwarming proof of the value SARTA brings to the community through video, audio, and written storytelling.

The core of this effort was social marketing, in concert with digital marketing, print, bus signage, and station posters — all showing riders. The goal was to increase awareness of SARTA’s service benefits by emphasizing the SARTA/rider/community relationship. We actually interviewed riders on the bus type they frequent (which necessitated turning off the engine and thus the air conditioner on hot summer days in order to best hear our rider subjects!) to create video and audio content for our social marketing implementation.

We helped the client monitor metrics such as social media engagement and click rates, which experienced healthy enhancements. It was also interesting to see the relative difference between each person’s stories, since our social media strategy was built around having each rider get their due one at a time in weekly sequence. The entire campaign resulted in a total of 451,855 impressions, 282 link clicks, and 410 reactions on Facebook.

Akron-Canton Airport

Northeast Ohio’s preferred airport

Akron-Canton Airport is “a better way to go^®" made even better with extensive redesigned and updated facilities for the best travel experience possible. CAK takes pride in offering a relaxing customer experience and affordable fares to popular vacation destinations, both in the US and abroad.

As their transportation marketing agency, Innis Maggiore created a sleek, elegant, and functional web experience that uses a combination of native content with third-party widgets to help the traveler find everything they need to in order to plan, buy, and track with ease. Users save time instead of wasting it getting to arrivals, departures, and booking flights since these CTAs are conveniently and prominently available in the hero panel.

• features 4 airlines, 18 nonstop flights, over 150 one-stop flights, and nearly 100 international destinations
• a regional airport with amenities and convenience greater than the competing larger market airports
• named Northeast Ohio’s preferred airport