Christmas begins in the train
In commercial contexts, the Christmas mood is a bit of a worn cliché. It needs to be handled carefully or else it becomes stale and nauseating. But this particular campaign has almost become a Christmas tradition, running annually, even though we no longer work for DSB.
Hop on the train and do an early Christmas.
Christmas is not only the busiest and most profitable period of the year for the sales department at DSB. As well, it’s the last chance to achieve the sales targets and make a good impression on the Danes, who aren’t always especially enthusiastic about DSB. Tickets to get home for Christmas on 24 December sell themselves. However, there are plenty of other Christmas occasions during November and December where the Danes prefer not to take the train. But in fact, there are plenty of good reasons to hop on the train when doing Christmas shopping, Christmas parties, family visits, and so on.
Therefore, the Christmas campaign of 2017 had two overall objectives: to positively influence DSB’s reputation using a sympathetic, emotional communication, in order to strengthen DSB’s relation to the Danes, and to increase the number of sold Orange tickets in November and the first half of December.
In commercial contexts the Christmas mood is a bit of a worn cliché. It needs to be handled carefully, or else it risks becoming stale and nauseating. Besides, at that time DSB was hit by a lack of trust among the Danes, and therefore an overly romanticizing campaign on the ”hygge” effect of hopping on a Christmas train might provoke a backlash on social media.
This is why, the objective was to do an authentic and credible presentation of the appeal of the train as a form of transportation. The campaign platform was named ”Take the train and do an early Christmas”, and it had a tactical message of Orange tickets for max. 99 kr. The primary target group of the campaign was women +35 years, and the secondary target group the 18-25 year olds, a group that increasingly choose new offerings in the market such as GoMore, Flixbus, etc.
To ensure appeal in the young target group a strategic collaboration with several influencers was established, and e.g., Astrid Olsen became a central part of the campaign. On her own channels, and using the theme ”Get ready with me”, she showed how it was possible to get ready for Christmas parties on the train. She held events at which lots of content for DSB’s social channels was produced. Also, she participated in the overall communication of films, OOH, prints, etc.
Select results.
- Target: 54,378 trips. 90,032 trips sold.
- Turnover target: 4,894,200 kr. Result: 9,743,070 kr.
- Liking: 56%. Benchmark for DSB campaigns: 26%.
- Improved, positive view of DSB (reputation): 16%. Benchmark: 3%.
- Improved understanding of message: 91%. Benchmark: 67%.
- Highest SoMe score ever for DSB.
Do you want to know more?
Contact Christina Tønnesen
Phone: +45 21 70 95 89
Mail: ct@mensch.dk
