Deutsche Bahn Festival Campaign

Background

Deutsche Bahn sells a wide range of tickets for rail travel to Germany and across Europe.  They have a partnership with Eurostar enabling passengers to travel from London to Paris or Brussels before taking a DB train to other European destinations.  Deutsche Bahn is a well respected company within Germany, but it is not well known within the UK tourist market except by those wishing to travel by rail within Germany.

The objectives of the campaign were:

• Raise brand awareness
• Encourage people to associate European rail travel with Deutsche Bahn
• Make people consider the train as an alternative to flying
• Build an email database for subsequent marketing campaigns

Idea

3Sixty research revealed that many young people post video diaries of their interrailing trips around Europe on YouTube and Facebook. They like to tell the stories of their experiences and adventures and hear those of their friends.

As well as this insight, research showed that they are often more interested in music festivals abroad than at home, where they can be expensive wash-outs. Big-name rock bands and sunshine, what more could they want?

Consequently, 3Sixty developed an online competition based on the thought, “There’s more to travel than just a destination – where’s your sense of adventure?”

Young people were encouraged to discover how easily they can get to festivals and locations in Europe by train.  Each question involved a different city along the way to the Melt! festival in Germany with tickets to the event as prizes.

Everyone who completed the questions and signed up to the mailing list also received a 10% voucher for travel on the Deutsche Bahn network, designed to encourage them to take their first journey into Europe by train.

Results

Entries to the competition have now exceeded the target number of sign ups (1,000) with the campaign only one-third of the way into its run.

Our Thoughts

What a nightmare brief. Sell a German rail company to students in the UK? No chance. Unless you tap into their obsession with music and get them thinking that where Glastonbury is all mud and wellies, festivals in Europe are altogether sunnier affairs.

Jon Waring, 3Sixty’s creative chief, talks about utility being the new creativity. His schtick is that you shouldn’t ever notice how inventive the agency has been because you are too busy playing the game, trying to win the chance to go and sit in a German coal mine for four days with The Kaiser Chiefs.

He has a point. Creativity is sometimes mistaken as being an end in itself, which, of course it is not. It is a means to an end. In this case, selling train tickets and building a brand.