Study: Bike Share Is Creating More Positive Conversations For Citi

330 docking stations and 6,000 bikes later, Citi Bike has definitely had an impact on the city of New York in its short time here (almost 3 months now), but what kind of impact has the program had for the bank itself? Despite some early PR problems, the bank's marketing executives say the sponsorship has been a resounding success.

“So far, everything is pointing in an extremely positive direction, more than I would have expected,” Elyssa Gray, head of creative for North America marketing at Citi tells Digiday. “The way that the city has embraced the program is truly remarkable.”

Even consumer sentiment has rebounded after a rocky start. The bank saw a huge spike in social conversations around the launch of Citi Bike, but that doesn't mean the sentiment was on the whole positive. Over time, however, Networked Insights data shows that the social reactions towards Citi Bike have consistently grown in favorability from less than 50% when the program launched to close to 80% today.

Digiday writes that Citi is collecting the data, crunching the numbers and carefully planning how to activate the five years and nine months left on the $41 million deal.