Southeastern modal shift

Rail travel is one of the most environmentally friendly ways to travel. It offers lower carbon emissions, energy efficiency, and reduced congestion when compared to other modes of transportation. In fact, according to Network Rails ‘Reimagining & Rebooting our passenger railway’ report, a single train can help remove up to 500 cars from our roads.

So, whether someone is travelling for work or pleasure, if they want to do their bit to reduce their carbon footprint, it makes sense to consider leaving the car at home and travelling by train instead. And if you live or work in the Southeast, that means travelling on the Southeastern network to a range of beautiful and diverse destinations across Kent and East Sussex.

As with all our campaign work, we use behavioural science to inform our approach. So knowing the challenge lies in encouraging individuals, accustomed to the convenience of car travel, to make a more environmentally conscious choice. Despite the clear benefits of rail – lower carbon emissions, energy efficiency, and reduced congestion – shifting ingrained habits requires making the greener option not only accessible but also appealing and easy to understand.

Southeastern make it easy for someone to travel on their network by offering a range of tickets to suit how they want to travel. Plus, they have a convenient online carbon footprint calculator, which allows customers to get insights into the environmental implications of their travel choices. The tool compares both train and car travel and gives you a clear understanding of the carbon emissions associated with your travel choices.

We know that making something look easy and attractive tends to work when you want to change behaviour, such as asking our audience to switch to a more environmentally friendly mode of transport.

So, our campaign for Southeastern used bold colours, with a joyous and vibrant mix of simple outdoor activities. The distinctive rhyming copy leveraged The Keats heuristic, which occurs due to a combination of the qualities of words that rhyme (i.e. they sound nice) and the fluency heuristic (which is how easy it is for our brain to process the information). As a result, copy that rhymes can be a very powerful persuasion tool as we evaluate the statements as more truthful.

To ensure maximum visibility and engagement across the diverse Southeast region, a strategic media mix was deployed. This included visually engaging digital display, dynamic social media campaigns designed to spark conversations and encourage sharing, impactful out-of-home placements in high-traffic areas to capture attention during daily commutes and leisure activities, and engaging radio spots to reach listeners during their journeys and at home. This multi-pronged approach was carefully orchestrated to touch potential customers at various points in their day and across different platforms

The campaign was a success, and outperformed planned metrics across all channels in the mix. In display alone, the campaign secured 54% more impressions than expected, greatly enhancing visibility, and an impressive +280% increase in sales against the planned target.​ It created a surge in sales that drove significant ticket revenue increase, +263% verses planned. And more tickets sold means more cars left at home. Happy customers, happy planet.

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