We chose a bold way forward: giving our brand a complete make over.

Shifting from a classic corporate brand, towards a more human and friendly brand.

Simply Positive became the brand idea and our internal mantra to turn the complete communication strategy around.

People don’t travel with NMBS/SNCB.

They simply take the train. And that is what we decided to call ourselves: the train.

Nothing more, nothing less.

The new dotted baseline – the first baseline without words is the most outspoken symbol of our new mission: people travel from dot A to dot B, our aim is to make this journey as pleasant as possible.

Brand name.

Placed on a simple grid, the straightforward new name gets a prominent place & supports the iconic ‘B’ logo – designed by Henri Vandevelde. A historically and well known symbol for the train in Belgium.

Typo

Using only one simple and positive typeface, Circular, in one weight only. Used in short sentences to get to the point quicker.

Multi-colored consistency

The logo and baseline are black or white. The backgrounds have lots of different colors to add that positive feeling and attitude.

The imagery is diverse, from copy only, over photography to artistic illustrations.

As long as the image is simple and adds optimism, they support our mission.

First baseline without words

We decided not to deliver proof of our ambitious service engagement with a baseline without words.

You travel from A to B... we try to deliver a smile during your journey. A universal symbol that everyone understands.

To measure the total rebranding impact, it is too early.

And no, we did not get a massive return in free publicity with our first waves.

What we do notice after 4 weeks is the rise in appreciation of our social communities. (Facebook likes of our posts / Retweets of campaign visuals)

These could be the first proofs that the sentiment around the brand is slowly turning around.

Traffic jams - on the other hand - aren’t decreasing – yet …

And public transport has been hit hard by the recent events in Brussels.

But, we do have 1 hard fact that supports our firm belief in the strategy and creative work :

Our first commercial campaign towards youngsters (GoUnlimited) resulted in a 12% raise in sales versus 2015.

(same product, same campaign period, same media investments – even though the 2 weeks campaign ran in the middle of the terrorist attacks)