A video that addresses the safety and environmental benefits of school buses is part of a larger effort by the American School Bus Council (ASBC) to positively portray the nation’s largest mass transit operation at a time when parents may be wary of sending their child to school on the yellow vehicles amid the ongoing COVID crisis.
“The next titan of transportation isn’t just around the corner, it’s already in your neighborhood,” the video posted to YouTube on Aug. 10 proclaims, as a school bus is revealed to the viewer.
The video refers to school buses as “the gold standard of safety” and an icon. It points out that school buses driven by professional drivers must comply with 48 federal motor vehicle safety standards, more than any other vehicle while transporting millions of students every day. In doing so, one school bus removes from the road 36 passenger vehicles that would otherwise be dropping off or picking up students.
ASBC awarded the PR campaign earlier this year to HMH Agency, which is also the publicity firm for school bus manufacturer Thomas Built Buses. Then COVID-19 happened.
“We originally conceived of the idea to take advantage of back to school time,” said Charlie Hood, the executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services (NASDPTS). “We’ve always wondered why we don’t do a better job of taking advantage of that natural interest that occurs in August and September. We wanted to amplify that and promote ASBC. The message got coopted by COVID to include those issues and now return to school.”
Christina Chu, the account supervisor at HMH, shared that the campaign’s message expanded to address parental fears and anxieties about putting their children on school buses during the worst global pandemic in a century.
“We want to educate parents that it’s safe to get kids on school buses,” she added.
In addition to the video on the general benefits of school buses released last week and another that is focused on COVID-19, HMH is developing fact sheets and flyers that state associations, school districts and bus companies can distribute to local media on the safety and importance of school buses as well as how student transportation will look this fall.
Chu said HMH is creating press releases geared toward school administrators and school board audiences as well as parents. Social media posts and paid Facebook advertisements are also part of the campaign.
The work includes updates to the ASBC web site and schoolbusfacts.com.
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Meanwhile, Hood said he hopes the campaign at least gets the point across to the general public that there are a lot of hardworking people nationwide who are doing everything they can to ensure children are safe on school buses this fall.
“These aren’t arbitrary decisions being made,” he said of various student transportation elements of school startup plans.
Joining NASDPTS on ASBC are the National Association for Pupil Transportation and the National School Transportation Association alongside school bus manufacturers Blue Bird, IC Bus and Thomas Built Buses.
