This short term campaign launched and promoted a new way to buy and book tickets on the Thalys train network. Consumers were driven to book tickets on trains between Paris and Brussels.

Thalys trains transport people between European cities. Recently, they have lost business to carpooling / car sharing websites, who can provide the same service for less money. To combat this, Thalys created the concept of train pooling: travel with a group of 4 friends, and receive last minute tickets at a low price that can compete with carpooling websites. Our task was to launch this new concept, called Tickup: Carpooling at 300km/h.

With zero media spending, and a total project budget of 50,000 euro, the campaign spread from it’s base of ‘car fans’ to reach 2.1 million people on social media. 900,000 people watched the videos. 4000 total people commented, 29,000 people liked, and 5000 shared.

Reaction from Sebastien Loeb’s fans was 90% positive, and the campaign was picked up in local and national media.

We enlisted the services of Sebastien Loeb, 7 time World Rally Champion and one of France’s most loved sportsmen. On April 8, Loeb posted a tease video on his Facebook page (750,000 fans): “Anyone interested in carpooling with me from Paris to Brussels? Be careful, I’ll go fast!”

After 500,000 views and 20,000 expressions of interest via likes and comments, we chose 3 lucky fans to make the trip with Sebastien. A few days later, the fans met Sebastien in the morning and Paris… and discovered that they would indeed be traveling at high speeds… in a Thalys train!

We captured the whole stunt on film, and released the video on April 16th, the day the Tickup service was officially launched.