Some rather filling campaign creative for Stagecoach UK Bus and their ticket product Easyrider. The creative was provided by Mr Sean ‘Smoothy’ Booth, with a big thank you to Mrs Booth for allowing her kitchen to become a photography studio and Hey Little Cupcake for a huge helping hand in preparing the cake.
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A recent arrival to the Studio North hub was an outline of Manchester City Council’s post-riot plans to financially aid affected small to medium sized businesses, and to restore consumer confidence with the “I ♥ MCR” campaign.
Thankfully, being neatly tucked away in Ancoats, Studio North was largely unaffected by the ordeal, but a read through of the plans left an impression regardless. The mention of the currently ubiquitous campaign “I ♥ MCR”, which with 20,000+ “likes” on Facebook is something people are definitely paying attention to, makes you wonder why similar campaigns haven’t been attempted to restore consumer faith in the current economic climate.
A quick look at the “I ♥ MCR” Facebook page wall shows a barrage of comments with consumer offers and business promotions available for all to see. This combined with an attractive logo plastered throughout the city centre gives people a ‘cool’ reason to pump their hard earned money back into the economy.
Time will tell whether or not the campaign will produce any tangible results, but it is safe to say that there is a clear opportunity for both the consumer and the economy to benefit. If such benefits are realised, it may be worth local councils and Westminster taking note, and in future rather than releasing statements from suit donning ex-Etoners urging people to spend, instead investing a little into similar, targeted campaigns, which benefit the consumer and give them a reason to actually respond to efforts promoting spending and economic growth.
And of course give marketing and branding agencies loads of business!
(Stuart McMullen is a graduate in English Language from Lancaster University and is currently on a paid work placement with Studio North as a Brand Research Assistant)
Stagecoach have introduced new routes and new buses to demonstrate their commitment to the continual improvement of transport links around Sheffield. The new single and double decker vehicles were split across six high frequency routes around the city.
Our task was to create a campaign that focussed on the improvements (though there was nothing necessarily wrong with the service in the first place!) and to develop consistent route branding, flexible enough to target specific audience profiles.
Stagecoach aim to attract an extremely wide audience that could include a young commuter travelling to their first job on a daily basis, but equally likely an OAP travelling into town once or twice a week.
Let us take you there
The chosen campaign demonstrates an emotive concept that ensures longevity while underpinning passenger’s route loyalty and the positives of bus travel. As well as regular bus users the campaign also had to consider car users thinking about switching their mode of transport.
Continuing our previous work with the Equal Opportunities Commission we are currently producing campaign literature for the recently formed Equality and Human Rights Commission in conjunction with the Department of Transport. On 26 July, new European legislation around access to air travel came into force. Disabled and less mobile passengers will have rights to assistance from booking a flight through to when they land at a destination in Europe. We have been tasked with delivering a campaign that targets travel agents across the UK to ensure the message is out there from the moment someone even considers taking a holiday in Europe.
