And here is the second of the trio of new videos from Metro’s marketing team, this one featuring the L.A.-based folk duo Steps of Doe with instructions for reloading your TAP card at ticket machines.
The new videos are intended as a fun way to help folks learn to ride the Metro system and remind everyone that taking transit can be fun and/or interesting. Please feel free to share/comment/review on social media using the hashtag #metrorocks. Metro is on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
The first video, which debuted last week, featured Galactic Flo promoting Metro’s and Google’s trip planner.
One other note: the musicians who appear in the videos (and the firm that made them, Conceptive, Inc.) are entirely local. If you’re a musician and would like to share your song about local transit, you can email us here.
The Metro Trip Planner is on the metro.net homepage. If you prefer, Google Maps can also be used to plan transit trips.
Categories: Go Metro, Metro Lifestyle
[…] of Doe, los intérpretes del éxito “TAP the Target” (vean el video de arriba), llevarán su fabuloso sonido en vivo al Portal Este de Union Station […]
[…] video presentó a Galactic Flo promoviendo el Planificador de Viajes de Metro y el de Google. El segundo video presenta al duo Steps of Doe explicando cómo recargar la tarjeta […]
These video series are complicated because they are lighthearted, which is nice, but at the same time, there are serious issues with our transit system (regional mobility, safe bus service at night, infrequent bus headways, lack of last-mile options).
A lighthearted image may present an image of misplaced priorities within the agencies and simultaneously present an issue that “everything is going ok.” There is much work to be done, and I’m not sure that the agency’s audience is ready for messaging like this.
Metro and other options are great if you live in the “right” neighborhoods (Downtown/Hollywood/Pasadena). Not so much if you don’t.
The amount of time and money spent on this, they could easily update their outdated TAP website, but no….
Other than being embedded on Metro’s website, where does this ‘air’? Fun videos are no good if they are not seen. I think that Metro may have turned around and started to preach to the choir. Education is good, if the audience is actually ignorant. If the audience is knowledgable, it is of little use. Would you expect a high school english teacher to learn english from Sesame Street?
There’s no point in “airing” this because fewer people watch TV nowadays. Pew Research and Nielsen ratings show that far more millennials don’t watch TV over Baby Boomers, and even then TV viewership across all age groups and ethnic backgrounds have been getting lower and lower throughout the years.
Besides, have you looked at TV show commercials lately? Most of them tend to be erection pills and other medicine aimed at older demographics.
Besides, airing a commercial on TV costs money; commercials are sponsors for a TV show, Metro is a taxpayer funded agency so what’s Metro, and the taxpayers, going to sponsor? KTLA 5 News?
In this internet age, far more people watch videos over the internet than watching the old tube. Better to just upload this over to Youtube and use a Twitter bot with a Metro hashtag.
You may have noticed that I put ‘air’ in quotes. I was intending that to be broad. If the video showed up as a commercial on a streaming channel, that would fit the bill. If Metro paid for some targeted YouTube presentations (ads before the video that you asked for), that would fit the bill. If they got KLCS to play it, that would fit the bill. If it showed up on LA’s channel 34 or 35 (can never remeber which is which), that would work. Some of those are free and/or cheap.
“Fewer people” that watch TV is still more than a million households in Metro’s service area.
This is hilarious, but wouldn’t the money spent on this video be better spent actually upgrading the outdated TAP software?
I think the video is excellent…and love the concept of using Los Angeles music talent to reach new and existing riders (especially Millennials). Sets up the potential for really great Metro/music partnerships. However, Metro always seems to forget to list their YouTube channel when promoting their social media channels. Gonna leave a comment on YouTube…
This has something to do with the video, but what does Metro intend to do with the looming EMV liability shift that occurs in about a year from now?
http://www.emv-connection.com/emv-migration-driven-by-payment-brand-milestones/
http://www.paymentssource.com/news/interchange/missing-the-emv-liability-shift-bears-a-huge-cost-3018661-1.html
In the video, it shows that you can pay for Metro tickets by swiping your credit or debit card. This is actually dangerous and not recommended today because of how easy it is for criminals to install skimming devices and steal off data from magnetic stripes. Don’t believe me? As with everything, Google it. It’s all there.
The magnetic stripe is ancient by today’s standards, it was developed in the 1950s and by today it’s like using a floppy disk in the world of USB flash drives and cloud servers. Skimming off data from a magnetic stripe is so easy that a teenager working a McDonald’s can do it
http://news.yahoo.com/video/video-shows-mcdonalds-employee-skimming-153121507.html
In addition, we’ve been having all these hacking breaches at major retail stores (Target, Home Depot, etc.) so the major networks are asking everyone to move to more secure EMV chip cards than the old magnetic stripe. Many banks are starting to issue credit and debit cards with EMV chips on them in advance of the EMV liability shift.
Come October 2015, any business or entity that still relies on magnetic stripes will be on the hook for whatever fraud costs involved. Basically, if someone were to plant a magnetic stripe skimming device on TAP machines or if someone were to hack into Metro’s data to steal debit and credit card info, come October 2015, the ball is on Metro’s court to deal with fraud costs.
Metro needs to upgrade their all their TAP kiosks ASAP to start accepting the new EMV credit and debit cards that’s being issued. You guys, and definitely the taxpayers, surely don’t want to be left on the hook for the fraud costs and the bad PR disaster for failing to comply with a more secure payment method. Look at Target; they suffered a bad public relations disaster and has yet to recover from it.
I’ve a feeling that the EMV shift is something that falls on the vending machine’s maker, Cubiks, and not Metro.
If that were the case then all merchants will ask Verifone, Ingenico and Hypercom, the three major manufacturers for credit and debit card POS terminals to pay for the cost, and all banks would ask NCR, Hyosung and Diebold, the three major manufacturers of ATMs for ATM upgrades. But they don’t. The upgrade cost falls on the merchant, so in this casr, Metro has to do it.