Metro Spent Nearly Half a Million Dollars on Ad to Woo Restonians

Remember the ad showing dancing suburbanites bopping to the beat while they hopped aboard the Silver Line, finally unchained from the boredom of all that green grass and cul-de-sacs??

Washington City Paper’s Will Sommer got the scoop on the ad’s pricetag for enticing Restonians onto the Metro.

“But Metro’s biggest—and priciest—push came in the form of dozens of dancers boogieing to the Wiehle-Reston East location. Backed up by a song from Australian power poppers Architecture in Helsinki, a conga line of joyful commuters make their way to the station.The message: Metro’s so great, people in Reston will start spontaneously dancing. That ad ran the cash-strapped system a hefty $483,320.42, according to Metro records.”

Did the work? We don’t know but Metro says ridership is strong with about 15,000 riders daily at each of the new Silver Line stations.

Read Sommer’s entire story here and relive the ad below: