The Port Authority of Allegheny County (PAAC), Pittsburgh’s public transportation provider, has a strong legacy of public transit support and ridership. However, during the Great Recession, PAAC suffered from budget cuts and limited growth. In 2018, PAAC found itself emerging from an era of austerity, with stable finances and growing ridership. Under the leadership of a new CEO, PAAC commissioned Campos to conduct a large-scale, multi-modal assessment of its brand and rider experience to help plan for the organization’s long-term future.
This process included discovery sessions with stakeholders across the organization, extensive secondary research on innovations and best practices in the category, data analysis and customer segmentation, focus groups with key segments, a rider survey focused on the customer experience, a market survey focused on brand perceptions and observational ride-alongs focused on employee engagement and its connection with the rider experience.
The market survey was designed to assess the merit of several potential brand strategy directions for PAAC, which were developed in partnership with a communications agency. Two particular brand strategy statements emerged as the highest performing across virtually all segments of the market. Synthesizing this data with the insight garnered from all stages of the research process, Campos developed an in-depth brand strategy for PAAC to follow going forward, including a recommended positioning statement, values and desired image for the brand.
PAAC’s rebranding based on this strategy is already well on its way. Our partner agency, using the brand strategy provided by Campos, has developed creative concepts for the new branding, such as potential names, logos and taglines for the organization. PAAC is in the process of selecting the brand concept with which they would like to proceed. This research-tested concept will position Port Authority as a dependable, familiar, and hard-working part of the Pittsburgh community.