IVCC + Philly Phlash Marketing Case Study

Project Goal

The Independence Visitor Center Corporation’s Philly PHLASH is a bus loop connecting Downtown Philadelphia’s tourist attractions and is used by thousands of Philadelphians and tourists every year. Over the course of several years, the goal for the IVCC has been to promote the Philly PHLASH service via a mobile website, in two separate versions, and public relations outreach. Most recently, Neff was hired to photograph and promote the addition of the Hershey’s Kitchen café in the Independence Visitor Center.

Philly PHLASH is convenient and affordable bus service that wanted a new website experience with the most updated technology. In approaching this project, we needed to ensure that the user’s experience was as easy as possible for the thousands of different people who see and use the service annually. Our challenge was to develop a mobile website that would function like a web application, relying heavily on a GPS based module.

Project Solution

Our team made sure to design for a wide variety of users to appeal to PHLASH’s wide demographic. To execute the design successfully, we created a mobile experience able to display GPS location and upcoming bus traffic information with a design simple and modern enough for passengers to easily locate important content and browse the site. We obtained user feedback of the existing PHLASH experience and researched the city’s tourism statistics to improve upon the previous iteration. As technology advanced, we edited the mobile site in 2018 to make the experience even easier than it already was.

• Developed a GPS-based mobile website that allowed customers to connect with buses driving around Philadelphia in real-time
• Increased brand awareness through public relations campaigns
• Achieved dramatic increase in ridership after mobile website launch
• Redesigned and updated the mobile website with a version 2.0 to accommodate the growing company
• Photographed Hershey’s Kitchen, a new café experience at the IVCC