It was time to unleash the power of data to steal shares from cars. Consumers needed to be convinced by real-time information at the moment it mattered the most: when they were stuck in the traffic. What’s more annoying for a driver than waste time in traffic congestion?

We initiated the conversation when we knew they were going to travel a long distance, showing them that their projected arrival time was longer than expected (and probably longer than traveling by train).

If they decided to take their cars anyway, our real time traffic feed was activated as they are driving down a busy highway. And we reminded them how bad was their travel to their final destination shortly after they arrived.

Before

We identified drivers about to travel by targeting those who looked up for weather or traffic information for a destination outside their home town with digital banners and SEM communicating real-time travel times for car versus train.

During

With digital out-of-home, we covered all of the major highways between Quebec and Toronto. The message was adapted in real-time, displaying the estimated arrival time based on the location of each sign and current traffic conditions. Because it was based on the geo-location of each board, the message was always customized.

After

We leveraged our out-of-home partnership to collect all the mobile deviceIDs of drivers exposed to the advertising as well as drivers who were stuck in traffic jams. We then re-targeted these drivers as they arrived at their destination, displaying a personalized message that reminded them of the frustration of being in traffic and the benefits of taking the train.

VIA Rail succeed at stealing shares to what seemed an unbeatable competition: car! Train ridership rose by 11.7% year-over-year, and revenues increased by 13.9%, to the expense of cars.

All of our media tactics greatly outperformed the usual standards. Contextualized messages generated click rates that were 95% higher than all of our display and mobile campaigns, and they helped increase the conversion rate by 14% on VIA Rail's booking engine.

Finally, over 1.5 million unique mobile device IDs were collected in our DMP, increasing the volume of audiences we can activate in our always-on campaigns.