Inside the Campaign: HMH’s “Kid Snippets – School Bus Safety” for Thomas Built Buses

In the series Inside the Campaign, the 4A’s features creative work from its member agencies. Here, HMH takes you inside its campaign for Thomas Built Busses.

Campaign: Kid Snippets – School Bus Safety

Agency: HMH

Client: Thomas Built Buses

Program Background
Thomas Built Buses, based in High Point, North Carolina, is one of the nation’s leading school bus manufacturers. With a 100-year track record of manufacturing some of the safest buses on the roads, the innovative, quality-committed company has it all.

Well, almost.

Thomas Built also wanted:

  1. Broader name recognition among the general public and
  2. A way to enhance safety outside the bus.

HMH created a campaign to educate kids on school bus safety, a core principle of the Thomas Built brand, in order to enhance student well-being and boost corporate good will. To make learning about school bus safety fun, HMH partnered with YouTube sensation Bored Shorts TV to create a “Kid Snippet” video on school bus safety.

The video, which was promoted via PR, social media and internal communication, moved viewers both to laughter and to a special page on the Thomas Built website (www.thomasbus.com/safety) for a complete list of downloadable school bus safety rules.

The campaign was an unmitigated success.

HMH gained coverage in local and trade press and got shout-outs from mom and dad bloggers. However, the real results were in the metrics.

  • In a month and a half, the video received more than 170,000 views (at this writing, more than 550,000 views), driving more than 46,000 people to the Thomasbus.com/safety landing page, with an average on-site time over three minutes.
  • Facebook and banner ads promoting the campaign saw a Click Through Rate of 1.27%. (That’s more than 31 times greater than Google’s display benchmark of .04%).
  • Unique visits to the Thomas Built website jumped more than 175%, and more than 1,100 schools across the country downloaded safety information from the website to share with their students and teachers.
  • In addition, organic SEO search on Youtube for “school bus safety” placed the video on the first page, ensuring even more success in the coming years.
  • The Thomas Built Buses Facebook page saw an increase of more than 1,000 new followers, many of them schools and parents.

All this in about 90 days!

The campaign taught viewers key safety tips and solidified Thomas Built’s role as a leader in innovation and safety.

Credits

  • Executive Creative Director: Shawn Kelley – HMH
  • Art Director: Teddy Shipley – HMH
  • Copywriter: Kathy Valenti – HMH
  • Production: Bored Shorts
  • Media Director: Jenn Hausman – HMH
  • Social Media: Dana Thomas – HMH
  • Digital Campaign and Analytics Manager: Robb Beck – HMH
  • Account Service: Christina Chu, Betsy Grant – HMH