May 2015 in France was a bonanza for holidays – 3 out of 4 weekends were holiday weekends! Thalys wanted to activate people to book tickets to visit cities on the Thalys train network.

We captured the sound identities of Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, and integrated them into three outdoor installations. Each city was represented by over 1000 sounds. Each sound had a unique headphone jack.

The sounds included overheard conversations, street musicians, language lessons, market sellers, church bells, scam artists routines, and hundreds more.

The Thalys network connects France, Belgium, Germany and Holland. Their destinations are relatively close to each other – close enough to not appear very exotic! Many Parisians, for example, find imagine why anyone would bother visiting Brussels. By using a new way to showcase the character of a city, sound, we hoped to break through this apathy.

We changed perceptions about nearby cities on the network. Thousands of people interacted with the installations.

At the time of writing, tickets for the three holiday weekends in May are selling out fast.

Visits to Thalys.com spiked by 20,000 impressions, a 58.5% increase on the average for that time of the year.

Thalys advertise their destinations to sell tickets. The campaign ran in three cities over a couple of weeks. The Paris billboard was displayed in Amsterdam, the Amsterdam billboard in Brussels, and the Brussels billboard in Paris.