How newsbrands helped First Great Western to successfully change people’s attitudes towards rail travel.

1. MEC and First Great Western
Executive summary
First Great Western (FGW) are the proud inheritor of arguably the UK’s most famous rail
network. The Great Western Railway has been carrying trains out of Paddington since
its design by Brunel in 1838. Despite this history and heritage the UK rail network is
plagued by a sea of negativity that has eroded the pride and romance of rail travel. FGW
are leading the charge of a renaissance of rail travel, they wanted to get people out of
their cars and onto the train, they wanted to inspire and excite people to “Be a Great
Westerner” and they did!
Background and objectives
A lack of marketing support has seen a sharp decrease in brand awareness and net
promoter scores. As such a marketing campaign designed to promote leisure travel was
planned for spring 2014, however the weather had other ideas. The storms that hit
Britain in February 2014 removed part of the track at Dawlish – cutting off Cornwall from
the rest of the FGW route. Revenues suffered across their entire operating region. Our
brief suddenly got harder! In addition to our original objectives of shifting brand
awareness by 8% and realising a 7.5% growth target; we now had a £14m black hole
created by the flood to fill!
Insight
After the disaster of February we needed to tell people FGW were open for business and
importantly inspire them to book a ticket. We needed to get leisure travellers out of their
cars and onto a train. We had to encourage and inspire people to “Be a Great
Westerner”.
With a route serving iconic destinations such as Bristol, Bath, Cornwall and Dorset
inspiration should be easy. But how could we inspire people in sufficient numbers to
meet our targets. It became apparent that we had to focus on London. With more
people, earning more money and taking 40% more short breaks than the rest of the UK;
cracking London was the key.
How could we make sure our message was seen and heard? We needed to be different,
be inspirational and do something unexpected from a train operator.

2. The strategy
London needed to be our focus, we needed to inspire and be unmissable. Our iconic
destinations were the key to inspiring people onto the train.
We launched by putting FGW’s iconic destinations on London’s most iconic outdoor
sites. Amongst others we wrapped the Waterloo IMAX and took over Cromwell Road.
These were not vanity buys; the recent research from Neuro-Insight showed that a
campaign launch encompassing iconic outdoor “primes” other activity and ensures
longer message recall. In short they would give our campaign launch the boost we
needed. The message was clear – FGW was open for business and ready to take you to
England’s most iconic destinations.
After launch we needed to inspire for 12 weeks to ensure ticket sales across the
important summer period; but which channels and brands would be most effective?
To answer this question we turned to MediaZ, MEC’s propriety research tool which
allows us to understand consumers’ attitudes to media channels and also the
characteristics displayed by media brands (e.g. MediaZ tells us that ABC1 adults view
The Telegraph as being the most trustworthy media brand).
The message was clear…..
When seeking inspiration people turn to newsbrands. In fact 65% of ABC1 adults state
that their national newspaper is their first port of call for inspiration. This insight
combined with their travel editorial strength made newsbrands the obvious choice for
inspiring Londoners to “Be a Great Westerner”.
However this presented MEC with a challenge….
FGW operates within a distinct regional footprint and have previously discounted any
media which strays outside this. National newspapers cannot replicate this area in print
and as such have been previously been excluded. Utilising the MediaZ insight alongside
media consumption data from TGI and cross-media reach data from TouchPoints MEC
built a strong business case for the inclusion of newsbrands. The evidence was
compelling and for the first time FGW agreed to look outside of their defined catchment.
This presented an opportunity for a step change for the “Be a Great Westerner”
campaign.
Working closely with The Times, Telegraph and Guardian we built a strong multi-
platform newsbrand campaign that would inform and inspire. In print we secured
innovate and unmissable formats such as floating pages. All booked south only – giving
our media owner friends their own headaches! Digitally we were able to replicate the
FGW footprint more closely but again we pushed publishers to deliver formats that would
truly inspire our audience and give us the perfect canvas to display our breath-taking
imagery. Rotating mega banners, belly-bands and home page takeovers were all
secured across all devices. This time we gave our creative partners the headaches!

3. With inspiring Londoners being key we then turned to London’s most iconic brand. In
partnership with the Evening Standard we created ‘The Great Escape’ which
encouraged Londoners to leave the city for the day or weekend. The Great Escape was
a brand new cross-platform content strand created by the Evening Standard, MEC and
FGW. It was their first partnership to include the newly launched London Live alongside
their print and digital platforms.
The Great Escape was curated by the Evening Standard’s travel editor Simon Calder
and was designed to drive awareness, excitement and inspiration. He produced in paper
destination guides and hosted video guides that aired on London Live. Everything was
geared towards inspiring Londoners on the train, not only to the iconic destinations but to
visit hidden gems too.
We needed to be inspirational, we needed to be unmissable but ultimately we needed to
sell train tickets. And we did….
Results
The campaign was seen by 84% of adults across the region and resulted in FGW’s
highest ever levels of spontaneous awareness at 52%, an increase of 124% in the east
of the region (including London) where net promoter score has also seen a threefold
increase.
Importantly the campaign also delivered ticket sales! Campaign launch saw FGW’s
highest revenue day in 2014 and over the campaign period revenue increased 16% year
on year.
The campaign was even given the royal seal of approval - Prince Charles contacted
FGW directly to congratulate them on the campaign and to pledge his support.
Client view
Phillip Edgerton, head of marketing, First Great Western, said of the campaign:
“MEC planned and delivered a unique campaign that looked at our brief from a different
angle and tapped into new ways to influence our target audiences. Clever thinking and
collaboration developed our existing messaging into a brand new campaign that
delivered increased brand awareness and sales.”

4. Supporting images