Member Article

The more social way to travel #passthemessageon

Following its most successful marketing campaign ever ‘leave the cars behind’ created by Guerilla, West Yorkshire Travel Plan Network appointed the integrated agency to deliver a second campaign. The campaign, launched recently, has been created to promote the benefits of using public transport to car commuters.

The new campaign features the community of West Yorkshire interacting through social media channels including twitter and facebook and sharing their travel experiences, good and bad, as they go about their everyday commutes. Using similar graphical treatments to the social media interfaces, the creative brings the contrasting experiences and interactions of car and non-car drivers to life through a believable arrangement of posts, facebook likes and tweets.

Clever sign off lines including ‘there is a more social way to travel’ and ‘learn to like the rush hour’ play with social media dialogue and reinforce that there is a better way of travelling. In addition to direct mail, staff posters, mircosite, e-shots and online banner advertising, Guerilla has also created an animated online video.

Dan Appleby, Group Account Director said, “The challenge was to supersede our last campaign, which generated over 3000 campaign applications for the MetroCard tickets. Strategically we decided to go down the social media theme as it gave us a fantastic creative platform to showcase examples of the stress and frustrations that people face everyday by using the car. Similarly the positive experiences of commuters using public transport could also be highlighted in a realistic way”.

Simon Linley, Travel for Work Advisor, West Yorkshire Travel Plan Network, said, “The Free MetroCard campaign has proved to be a huge success again with a record number of car drivers in West Yorkshire applying for a free ticket. The campaign’s creative and video was well received by the target audience and allowed the initiative to highlight the benefits of commuting by public transport from a different perspective.

This campaign can certainly be developed further and will become a key feature of West Yorkshire Travel Plan Network marketing strategy moving forward.“

The campaign has generated over 3,800 applications. West Yorkshire Travel Plan Network and Guerilla are already building on this early success by rolling the campaign’s creative across outdoor media in conjunction with Bradford College’s sustainable travel campaign and Metro’s Keep In Touch initiative for regular users of public transport.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Madeleine Griffith .