Case study
Northern – encouraging leisure travel across the network
The brief
Northern asked us to develop a campaign that would raise awareness of the many different places you can reach on a Northern train. The primary focus was to encourage leisure travel, giving people more reasons to travel outside peak commuter hours. We also wanted to drive traffic to Northern’s site.
The delivery
We developed a campaign focusing on the varied and wonderful walking routes that are accessible from Northern’s stations in both rural and city locations. We linked with walking experts, Walks Around Britain to develop a series of 12 Northern Rail Trails. The rail trails were available to download as PDF maps from Northern’s site and we used social advertising, influencer relations and media relations to create awareness and engagement.
As part of the campaign we hosted a special train on Yorkshire Day with a group of competition winners who were invited to walk with Walks Around Britain’s writer and producer, Andrew White on a specially-designed route that took in the famous Ribblehead Viaduct.
The results
Map downloads are consistently one of the most popular content pages on Northern’s site with more than 2500 downloads
Positive media coverage was achieved in key regional publications and national walking titles
Partnership with Walks Around Britain led to both reach and engagement with sustained coverage and social amplification including TV exposure as part of the Walks Around Britain series on cable channels
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2500More than 2500 downloads