LA Metro wants you to ride the D
I talked to the team about building fandom for public transit.
Last week the Los Angeles Metro announced three long awaited subway stations on the D line. The video has over 1M views across platforms. An hour after posting, the team quickly followed up with merch to celebrate. A shirt that simply reads “Ride the D”. They did a full year’s worth of sales in under 24 hours. The design made it onto Late Night with Seth Meyers. They couldn’t have predicted one piece of merch could become such a moment.
When you work in social, you’re often asked to see the future. What format will break through? How can we get this to go viral? The truth is, even the best social teams surprise themselves. Jane Ashley, who leads the social media strategy at LA Metro, told me, “We didn't anticipate that the announcement post would be completely eclipsed by something we barely officially promoted.” That’s the fun of working in this industry. I talked to the LA Metro team to learn more about how they announced the D line.
The announcement
One thing the social team did expect? People were going to care about the D line. Jane shared, “The vision for the D Line subway in its fully extended glory (!) dates back to the 1980s or even earlier. Political strife meant it took decades to become reality. That long history, combined with its location through the highest-density corridor in Los Angeles and its status as one of only two fully underground, heavy-rail lines in our transit system (allowing riders to truly bypass all car traffic), makes the D Line extension among Metro’s most highly anticipated openings of all time.”
While the social team knew there was anticipation, they weren’t given a heads up before the announcement. Joseph Lemon, the social content manager at Los Angeles Metro, said, “The social team finds out when everyone else does. On the morning of the announcement, we gathered in our ‘War Room’ (our regular conference room) with a livestream of the official Board meeting pulled up, waiting for the news just like the public.”
Once the announcement was live, it was time for the nine-person social team to move. Jane tells me, “The moment the board member announces the date, each channel manager downloads the file with the correct date from a prepopulated Dropbox and scrambles (read: fights against abysmal Internet speeds in our building) to upload to their respective channel with independent oversight to modify the file or caption for their platform.”
The video creative caught my eye because they took a popular format—screenshots of comments asking for something—and tweaked it. They took those comments, but placed them within drone footage using After Effects—animating them popping up on the screen as the first-person footage moves into the new station. It was a slight build that made a big difference. Joseph said the style “was a new take on something we have used successfully in the past, which carried the tension all the way into the station entrance and the date drop.” He said they don’t use After Effects often but the “bigger moment” felt like it needed it. The video has over 1M views across platforms.
The shirt
Then there was the shirt.
One hour after the launch video was live, the team followed up with another post. “Give the gift of the D before opening day 5.8.2026!” with a shirt that simply says “Ride the D”. Just the right amount of chaos.
Jane tells me the idea came from Reddit. “Months prior, the shirt concept had been mocked up by a Redditor, and r/LAMetro all but demanded we make it.”
The team knew diehard fans would buy it—but they didn’t expect the reality of the response. They did a full year’s worth of sales in under 24 hours. And then continued to do an additional year’s worth of sales over each of the next three days. It’s worth noting that the Metro Shop is essentially a “passion project by the social media team”, without even one staff member dedicated to it full time.
Many commenters assumed the post was executed by a Gen Z intern. Jane told me, “While we do absolutely have Gen Zs on the team driving tons of successful ideas (including handling most of the legwork of the T-shirt execution), the reality is all three working-age generations are represented plus a range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds.” She says, “Our different lenses and freedom to give and receive feedback, regardless of bureaucratic hierarchy, is one of our greatest strengths.”
Of course, I had to know about the approval process. Jane said that they seek buy-in from everybody on the immediate team and “generally operate under the assumption that senior leadership trusts our expertise and judgment to push the edges of what’s acceptable for a government account without actually crossing it.” The team reads Link in Bio (thank you!) and understands how to play with the tension that exists between what audiences might traditionally expect from a government account and what they deliver.
It’s ultimately a good reminder to provide multiple on-ramps for announcements. It’s a concept I learned from Matthew Stasoff’s very good social signals deck. Brands must utilize different tactics—not just one hero asset—to bring audiences in. Get in the comments. Release merch. Make a meme. You never know what piece of the announcement will take off. For the LA Metro, merch was a powerful (and unexpected) on-ramp.
The story
The excitement for a piece of merch isn’t about revenue for the LA Metro team. It means more. Public transit needs branding and fandom too. It’s why they do collab posts with @nathanialpov and Metro Art or get 5.2M views for simply showing real people celebrating a new train line. Jane told me that a number of team members are car-free Angelenos (“Yes, we exist!”), so the impact of the shirt has been meaningful to them on both a personal and professional level. It became an opportunity to reach people who rarely think about public transit.
“A T-shirt got more people excited about a subway opening than any official announcement ever could. Wouldn’t it be a marketer’s dream to have every other person in LA walking around in a Ride the D tee in the weeks prior to the opening?”
What I’m scrolling
AI-generated art can’t be copyrighted after Supreme Court declines to review the rule. Cory Doctorow has a great thread on the decision here.
Facebook was an important platform for James Talarico to reach online audiences. “Facebook was the last platform we joined for the @TeamTalaricoHQ accounts. Despite that smaller window of time, the platform caught up and grew to be our biggest platform! Out of over a million followers, over 379k were on Facebook—reaching the most critical voters across TX.” Their digital strategy is led by Luminary.
The New Screen Fest reflected words into someone’s eye to announce submissions are open. The video has 3M views.
I’m speaking on a panel at SXSW! See you there?
This video from BANDIT reminds me of The Studio. It’s directed by my friend Henry Kornaros, who is the co-founder of Public Opinion and works on Track Star.
Clothing brand Hanifa shared a thoughtful post announcing they are hitting pause. It happened amid pre-order backlash and fulfillment struggles. The video is filled with lots of comments of understanding and support.
A24’s Backrooms trailer is the 9th most-shared TikTok on the platform in the last seven days. It has 36M views.
Sinners released footage from their hair and makeup test, narrated by Ryan Coogler. A good example of how b-roll paired with interesting VO can turn into an entirely new story. It has 2M views.
I’ve come back around on the McDonald’s CEO. I’d like to see the other fast food CEOs grow their social accounts like he has! Have you seen his LinkedIn? That being said, I bet the Burger King team is very happy that they just so happened to be running a very fun campaign with their CEO at the same time.
Zara Larsson doing the Portland bike bus has 13M views. Outside but also online. The strategy of 2026.
If you enjoy free sends like this one, you can upgrade to a paid Link in Bio subscription. You’ll get weekly strategy newsletters and quarterly trend reports, along with access to the Discord community.
It might even be an educational expense at your company! Here’s a template for you to use when asking.
And if you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you for making this newsletter possible!
The social signals deck in the article today was a gold mine!