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South Western Railway
Brand Campaign
Anchor 1
agenda setting idea
Spread Your Wings
South Western Railway is one of the largest train operators in the UK, connecting the South Coast with the heart of London.
But during lockdown, commuters found themselves working from home and travel restrictions made people seek out more local leisure activities.
Our research found that despite there being many benefits to working from home, people were in fact “languishing”, sleepwalking through life without reaching their full potential.
Our job was to nudge them back into train travel by showing them how getting back out there, be it for work or pleasure, will help their world feel bigger and richer.
So, through an unlikely avian friendship between two brand characters - Wesley Peck, our cheeky-chappie pigeon from Peckham and Sandy C. Gull, a seagull from Hove - we invited our audience to go out into the world and spread their wings once again.
The campaign covers both the commuter and leisure audiences, and runs across all channels (TV, Radio, OOH, digital, social, owned and earned media).
The idea continues to stretch to include other comms strands, such as promoting their Smart ticket offering and an always-on campaign which encourages passengers to book directly.
The campaign improved all brand metrics - even harder metrics like value for money, despite an increase in fares. SWR’s NPS also rose by +20pts amongst commuters aware of the campaign, making it the highest it had been in almost 5 years.
Most importantly, this translated to the bottom line: 6 months after the campaign’s launch, econometrics showed that it had delivered an ROI of £3.50 and £4.79 in incremental revenue.
Our Autumn Leisure campaign went live in November 2022 across TV, VOD, cinema, social, DOOH, and display.
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