The Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) is responsible for constructing, managing, operating, and improving the State’s toll facilities, as well as for financing new revenue producing transportation projects to help keep traffic moving in Maryland. MDTA’s tolling system participates in the E-ZPass program—E-ZPass Maryland is an electronic toll collection system that allows users to pre-pay tolls, eliminating the need to stop at a toll plaza or pay a higher rate at cashless tolling facilities.
To further position E-ZPass Maryland as a customer service-driven leader fulfilling the state’s Customer Service Promise, FOVNDRY (formerly Van Eperen) provided integrated marketing communications services for E-ZPass Maryland from 2017-2020.
Core services:
Our efforts aimed to increase brand awareness, educate current and prospective customers about saving time and money by using E-ZPass Maryland transponders, and generate more sales of E-ZPass “On the Go. Annually, we supported summer and holiday ad campaigns with the following across a multitude of traditional and digital (newspaper ads, out-of-home such as gas pump displays, static and digital billboards, radio/traffic spots):
Additionally, our team secured sports sponsorships with the Baltimore Orioles and the Ravens, the Washington Football team, the Aberdeen Ironbirds, and the Bowie Baysox. Each sports season, we reached millions of fans via stadium advertising and promos, including official giveaways, ceremonial first pitches, team radio spots/digital ads/social media/partner e-blasts/in game PA announcements, and fireworks displays On-site activation was an incredibly important piece of these partnerships, with our team consistently negotiating more than 200% value, and including the E-ZPass Maryland Outreach Team to be on-site on game days.
Retail partners Giant Food Stores and Weis Markets were also activated in driving sales for the E-ZPass “On the Go” packaged transponders. Our team negotiated space in weekly circulars for both chains and developed the corresponding creative to increase sales. Both retailers displayed digital and print E-ZPass promotions in their customer service departments.
Between six campaigns (summer and holiday of 2017, 2018, and 2019), FOVNDRY’s strategic media buying paired with attention-grabbing creative resulted in:
out-of-home billboard impressions
paid Facebook and Instagram impressions
digital ad impressions (desktop, mobile, app), with a .43% average CTR
One OOH campaign alone achieved more than 8 million impressions over three months; and gas station topper advertising (implemented for three of the six campaigns) resulted in more than 19 million impressions.
Additionally, FOVNDRY-introduced radio contesting and the use of micro-influencers on social media were well-received by the client and are tactics they continue to employ today.
