Rail Delivery Group: Cross channel national recovery campaign

Rail Delivery Group (RDG) is a British Rail Industry membership body. The organisation wanted to run an advertising campaign that encourages growth in both the number of people that use rail travel, and the number of journeys undertaken by encouraging commuters and leisure travellers to think positively about rail travel and make use of the offers available, such as the 2for1 discount on London attractions, advanced tickets and rail cards.

The target audience was identified as two distinct groups: · All commuters – car, bus and rail · Leisure travellers – people who use train travel outside commuting hours, and those that holiday frequently in the UK RDG specified 25 cities where the campaign would run; based on size and commuter footfall these included Birmingham, Leeds, London and Manchester. Targeting was via a cross-channel campaign using mobile display, mobile pre-roll (a video ad that plays before the content the user has selected), digital audio, and digital out-of-home (DOOH) to ensure as many relevant people as possible were exposed to an ad. The cross-channel approach was reinforced using granular audience insights to reach the most relevant devices; this was based on a combination of behavioural, purchase and historical location data and precise geo-targeting of the most relevant postcodes within the top 25 cities using an indexing scale (i.e. the postcode areas where there were the highest numbers of commuters and leisure seekers.) Each format activated through Hawk played a different role in generating awareness/engagement, and the combination of channels maximised the reach of the campaign. Hawk platform enabled devices that have been exposed to a DOOH ad to be retargeted with either audio, display or pre-roll ads to increase recall and encourage exposed consumers to think more positively about train travel.