Gain on the train. Take the bus. This winter was just as every other winter, snowy and troublesome for The Swedish National railway. The campaign was supported by the infrastructure minister of Sweden and lead to a 6% increase in revenue compared to the same period last year.

8516 trains were delayed or cancelled resulting in as many coupons on the site, out of those 3245 coupons were clicked and claimed, a 38% clickthrough rate.

It was decided that the best way to communicate The Swebus Train Switch was to centre all communication around a site where coupons came up in real time every time a train arrived late. This way The Swedish National Railway´s problem with late arrivals were accentuated since all coupons were aggregated on the site during the whole campaign. The real time feed also increased the time spent on the site since visitors could wait and hope for a high value discount to show up. To drive traffic to the site banners were used on sites relevant for the target audience, ads in magazines talked about The Train Switch and we made it easy for users to spread the campaign on social media. The tech parts was easy since all train delays are public.

Winter comes every year. And as soon as it starts to snow the biggest public transport in Sweden, The Swedish National railway, comes to a grinding halt. For Swedes traveling by train, this means many will be late to their destinations and some won’t get there at all.

This is good. Last year’s heavy snow fall was jackpot for our client Swebus, a long distance bus company, and now it was time again. Swebus is Sweden’s most punctual public transport and the strategy is therefor to communicate the advantage of taking the bus, and to steal customers from The Swedish National Railway. Our goal was to remind how bad the train is at arriving on time.

The idea was called The Swebus Train Switch. A real time system converting late train arrivals into bus discounts. The campaign was aimed at all Swedes who were planning to travel during christmas.