Bringing in big ideas: positional brand creative - from strategy, to campaign, to rollout and playbook.
Leo Mack - Creative + Deisgn Lead
The big idea
What if we got you in the habit of having a great start? You saved on your ticket, and have everything (ticket, railcard, journey info) in one place, that increases the chance of a perfect journey. We can’t gaurantee all journeys will be great, but all great journeys start with Trainline.
Creative premise
The benefits of using Trainline make for a great start to your journey, and may in part be responsible for success – big or small – later down the track. Can Trainline claim credit for any win that occurs?
Why the strategy is great
It positions Trainline in the context that we’re most relevant to customers: before you start your journey. We can’t make the trains run on time, but we can put the best ticket and product in your hands when it counts the most.
The first part was working agency partner Mother London,
from nailing the strategy to landing on amazing creative.
As a key partner on the client side I helped guide the development of the creative throughout production, from pre and post production, TV and stills shoots, to design, and toolkits.
Mother London
In-housing!
The second part of my role was bringing all this magic in-house. From defining how to bring the idea, campaign, and visual world through the line, creating assets for other channels, and giving art direction to our creative studio and product teams.
A brand philosophy
More than just an ad line, we wanted to seed the idea of great starts throughout our customer experience - a guiding brand vision shaping our approach from internal and employer comms through to how we ideate growth marketing assets.
A global platform
Transcreated to balance direct translation with best localised meaning. ‘Great’ ‘journeys’ and ‘start’ having a wonderful array of meanings and second meanings.
A messaging and TOV framework
A unified point-of-view seeded through our product, marketing and comms, and across our international markets.
A brand platform
Now specific brand marketing programmes have an underlying beat. Raising awareness
of digital tickets on your network? Or driving consideration with commuters by skipping the queue for the ticket machines? All because Great journeys start with Trainline.
A construct for ad concepts
Buy with Trainline (and save… duh!)
Feel that transformative state… calm? bliss?
Achieve that great personal journey, and maybe and unexpected result?
Activations
‘We want to give you a great start to your journey’ as the ‘why’ behind promos or surprise and delight.
Headroom for creativity
It’s a new paradigm which encourages creativity. Ideation for marketing creative is reframed to show how customers might benefit in a less straightforward or traditional way, it encourages more fun and different ideas.
Get everyone onboard
Socialising this new bit of strategy across the business so that it becomes a naturalised piece of brand stragety that other teams can use and impliment in their work - from product to PR and people teams.
It takes time and repetition for ideas like this to sink in and make big changes for your brand. Still… one year on from launch shows a considerable jump in brand health metircs.
