Traveline Heroes

The bilingual campaign was born from the idea that the TLC services give people greater, more instant and informed powers when planning their journey or commute than ever before via their social media channels, app, website, and text and phone services. As users and ambassadors to the services, they became 'heroes' simply by harnessing the power of Traveline, green cape and all.

The TLC heroes, and by extension their stories, became the focus of the campaign. Photographer Kiran Ridley was commissioned to shoot them at various locations, around Cardiff and Swansea. We conceived, storyboarded and scripted a television advert.

The integrated campaign called for people to tell TLC why they believed they were a Traveline Hero via a microsite or by tagging their tweets or Instagram pictures with #travelineheroes. These drivers were engineered to encourage users to engage in, and give merit to the services that TLC offer and to think about ways in which they use them, rather than simply entering a prize draw.

Supported by TV, radio, outdoor and online advertising, the Heroes campaign far exceeded initial targets receiving a total of 4,740 hero entries. An impressive increase on their previous 2011 campaign, achieved with less than a third of the budget.

During the 6 month campaign period, Traveline Cymru saw an increase of over 47,000 users across their services compared to the same period the previous year. Additionally, Facebook ‘likes’ increased by over 600 and over on Twitter around 150 new followers were gained.

Finally, the effectiveness of the campaign was measured through an annual awareness survey conducted by an external agent. This is organised each year to help monitor the awareness of the Traveline Cymru brand and to measure the effectiveness of any campaigns.

Measured towards the end of the Traveline Heroes campaign, it demonstrated an increase of 11% in brand awareness. Amongst 16-35-year-olds, a key demographic for the campaign, 19% of those surveyed had seen the Heroes campaign. This measures to a pleasing uplift in awareness of 8% on 2011.