New York City Department of Transportation
Since 1999, when they first served as an It All Adds Up demonstration community, the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) has been wholly dedicated to using the It All Adds Up to Cleaner Air materials and messages—so are their big-city sponsors!
NYCDOT understands the importance of partnerships and has formed many with area nonprofit and private organizations, which have helped them achieve great success in spreading It All Adds Up messages to New Yorkers.
Big Sponsors Yield Major Reach
With over two million people riding buses each day in the city, the NYCDOT decided to partner with the vendor that places ads in bus shelters. The company agreed to use It All Adds Up ads as public service announcements where unpaid space was available. An estimated 3,200 ads have been placed in bus shelters around the city. NYCDOT has also partnered with their local sports teams, placing multiple ads at Yankee, Mets, Knicks, and Brooklyn Cyclone games where attendance has been as high as 60,000 per game (see photo 1, photo 2). They were also able to place electronic ads based on It All Adds Up messages in Times Square.
NYCDOT tapped others to create new It All Adds Up-related materials, including a local organization that offers film production training to students in Harlem. Students there helped produce a 30-second air quality spot to run at local movie theatres. NYCDOT also connected with a local HMO that sponsored a bus shelter ad and co-sponsored a calendar art contest. Plus, NYCDOT adapted the 10 Simple Steps and placed them in the calendar along with the It All Adds Up tagline.
Such active outreach and constructive partnerships are not unusual for the NYCDOT. In years past, they have partnered with McDonald's to place 10,000 It All Adds Up trayliners in area restaurants, and with Verizon to place It All Adds Up ads in phone booths around the city. In 2001, they built a campaign around the Leave a Little Room for the Air ad and worked with city agency refueling sites to place "Don't Top Off Your Tank" messages at the pumps.
For more information about NYCDOT's It All Adds Up activities, please contact Meseret Yilma at (212) 442-7182 or myilma@dot.nyc.gov or visit their Web site