Plymouth Citybus was formed in 1986 to take over the operations of Plymouth City Council Passenger Transport Department and now completes more than 17 million journeys each year on their services across Devon. We were asked to review the brand positioning to better fit the market and drive brand awareness sales.

A CONSISTENT MESSAGE

We undertook a comprehensive brand audit across all touch points and evolved the brand identity and language. For consistency among employees and customers, we developed brand guidelines.

IDENTIFYING THE OFFER

Two sub-brands were created, Flash Buses and Spark Buses. These buses were specific to certain routes and we created all the design and artwork, from branding to collateral.

We launched various campaigns such as ‘Add A Kid For A Quid’ and ‘Summer Sorted’ across Sky TV, social media, including innovative Geofilter Snapchat campaigns (these work in specific localities) as well as traditional marketing with increasing engagement. This strategy was to drive brand awareness at strategic and tactical levels and engage with a diverse audience demographic.

We reviewed all of the Citybus timetables annually to make sure they are clear and simple for people to use.

ADD A KID FOR A QUID

The ‘Add A Kid For A Quid’ campaign increased passenger growth by 21% and increased revenue by 9%.

SUMMER SORTED

Over the years, various marketing strategies have been implemented, including a targeted Sky TV ad campaign which we created and implemented, and social media campaigns including innovative Snapchat Geofilter campaign to reach younger consumers.

One of our more recent campaigns, ‘Summer Sorted’, reached 317,562 people, had 12,307 engagements and increased following by 674 across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.