OTG Dads & Grads e-store

Along with being the largest Museum in the nation dedicated to mass transportation, the New York Transit Museum is also a source for hundreds of unique transportation-themed gifts – perfect, we are told, to celebrate Dads on Father’s Day and to congratulate Class of 2017 Graduates.

This month, the Museum is taking its e-commerce operation underground, using MTA New York City Transit’s On The Go (OTG) Travel Station kiosks to offer customers an interactive shopping experience.

The OTG kiosks are an increasingly familiar sight throughout the subway system where customers can check the status of trains, buses, elevators & escalators and find other travel information. Now subway customers can also use this digital interactive technology to shop the New York Transit Museum Store. Featuring dozens of items, the OTG Dads & Grads kiosk stores offer a non-traditional and fun retail experience.

Paul J. Fleuranges, Vice President of Corporate Communications at NYC Transit told us “Our On The Go network offers dynamic interactive travel information, engaging digital advertising and now e-tail. The use of this powerful digital place-based network as an electronic storefront is another example of how we are moving forward to meet and exceed the expectations of our connected customers.”

The On The Go shopping experience, developed by OTG partner Intersection ^[1] and featured on more than 225 kiosks, is based on a similar e-store designed for Amazon that was deployed during the 2014 and 2015 holiday shopping seasons. Building off that success the Museum decided to run a campaign of its own.

Concetta Bencivenga, Director of the New York Transit Museum told us “We launched the Holiday Shopping Guide during the 2016 Holiday Season and we’re happy to once again provide customers with a convenient way to shop for unique, only in New York gifts for the Dads & Grads in their lives while they’re on the go”.

The Dads & Grads e-store offers millions of daily subway riders the opportunity to seamlessly browse the electronic catalogue on the kiosk display. The campaign runs as part of the advertising and agency content loop that populates the OTG kiosk. Customers launch this experience by simply touching on the campaign attractor screen, and can then scroll through more than forty popular transit-themed products on display.

Complete product and pricing information is available for each item. Once they’ve settled on an item, customers can request product information be sent to their phones via text message or to their email. The e-store sends customers a link to that product, which they can use to complete the purchase later via the Transit Museum online store.

During the 2016 holiday season, there were more than 35,000 interactions with the campaign including over 2,200 product email and text messages sent to customers. That activity translated into a $5,000 lift in sales for items featured in the Holiday Shopping Guide.

With more than 370 On The Go Travel Station kiosks, NYC Transit likely has the largest network of interactive Digital Out of Home storefronts anywhere. The Dads & Grads digital shopping experience will reach more than 1.5 million riders per day in the 48 subway stations where Intersection OTG kiosks are deployed, including major hubs like Grand Central – 42nd St, 14th St – Union Square, West 4th St, Jackson Heights – Roosevelt Av and Brooklyn’s Atlantic Av- Barclays Ctr.

The campaign went live in late May.