Moving commuters to day trippers

GTR Open the door to more

GTR (Govia Thameslink Railway) were on an almost impossible journey, transitioning (post-covid) from commuter to leisure revenue without any iconic, exotic leisure destinations on the network.

Unlike A to B commuter trips, understanding leisure is complex, everyone has a different emotive reason for a trip. Our approach was to create variants that were highly tailored to the audience, showing destination activities that fulfilled their emotional needs for travel and aligned with their interests. Each personalized trip was framed as a micro-holiday, playing into short journey times from GTR’s commuter heritage.

Building on our creative platform 'Every stop is a story' we invited people to 'Open the door to more', an idea that flexed to show all the multiple activities and put train as the enabler. We used the iconic train doors as a device, opening up as a portal, transporting audiences to their relevant destinations’ activity.

Our personalised approach emotionally resonated with the audience, capturing their attention with 25% VTR (5x above benchmark) and translated into real business impact with an increase in sales. The campaign truly cemented GTR brands in leisure for the long-term with 75% of people (15% increase yoy) saying they would consider the, once commuter, lines for leisure.