The Bike Walk Move campaign was created with funding from Transit for Livable Communities/Bike Walk Twin Cities to educate folks about the benefits of leaving the car behind and biking and walking more instead as a mode of transportation; and to inspire them to give it a try and hopefully start replacing some of their shorter trips to work, play, school, and so on.

Our research indicated there were multiple reasons why people chose to bike and walk: health, economics and the sense of freedom one gets outside the confines of the car were the top few.

So rather than focus our messaging to tightly and choose one in the name of some misplaced sense of consistency, we created ads around all of them and found that with enough saturation of the market, we were able to appeal to just about everyone with a message that rang true. The ads appeared in print, on buses, bus shelters, online and in other media.

The campaign was focused in North Minneapolis (with additional funding from the Minneapolis Department of Health and Family Support and Communities Putting Prevention to Work) and the Kingfield/East Harriet neighborhood during the summer and fall of 2011.

Freedom: The I Choose campaign was the most consistently well-liked in the research and focus groups. Just about everyone, it seems, wants to decide for themselves and loves the freedom of walking and biking.

Economics: No doubt the effectiveness of these messages was helped by the state of the economy and the price of gasoline.

Health: These were focused mostly in North Minneapolis where there are some glaring health disparities with the rest of the metro area.