No need to fly - around the world in Germany

By Ogilvy - Frankfurt

For German Rail Brand German Rail

Highly Commended in category Direct

In subcategory Consumer Marketing

WPPED Cream
WPPED Cream
WPPED Cream
WPPED Cream
Project Description
The task:
German Rail wanted to promote their super saver tickets for fast, inexpensive travel within Germany.
The problem:
72% of Germans prefer to spend their holidays abroad. How do we get them to also consider traveling within Germany using German Rail?
The solution:
Simply by showing them that it doesn’t make sense to spend lots of money on flying.
Because one can have basically the same experience by taking a train for only 19 Euros. In Germany.
So far, so good. But: The target group for this offer is basically everybody. How do we get their attention in today’s social media ad jungle?
A generic messaging strategy wouldn’t cut it.
Instead, we came up with a real-time approach tailored directly to every single person’s current location and their interests.
Agency Solution
We started with a simple but surprising visual idea:
A side-by-side comparison: One side shows a beautiful international travel destination; the other, a look-alike destination in Germany.
Our message: why pay for an expensive flight, when one can experience the same for only 19 Euros?
Then we used data and technology to make the campaign even more relevant and attention-grabbing on social media:
Through Facebook-data we identified target groups interested in specific destinations.
An algorithm found look-alike pictures on Getty Images. In Germany and all over the world.
Geotargeting pinpoints the closest airport to each person and the travel destination, while a search engine determines the cheapest flight price – in real-time.
Combining all this data, targeted video-ads made travel enthusiasts an unbeatable offer: A train ride for just 19 Euros instead of an expensive flight.
Completely automated. In infinite variations.
The campaign successfully brought target-group know-how, creativity and real-time data together to create a relevant, first of its kind real-time social media price comparison.
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