One of our key travel brands within OMD UK, Southeastern is always looking to innovate and try out new ideas. As part of their annual planning, we created an event to help us get to the strongest creative ideas whilst immersing media owners in the brand. Southeastern is always looking to promote Off-Peak travel to the amazing destinations on their network, however with greater competition in the market and changing consumer behaviour, we needed to revitalise planning to bring about some truly innovative ideas.
OMD UK, therefore, organised a sunny day trip down to Margate, taking over an entire high-speed train carriage and filling it with 40 media owners (including Sky, C4, News UK, Spotify, UniLad and Yahoo), clients and OMD specialists.
The day began at St Pancras International with the boarding of Southeastern’s high-speed train. Our media owner partners received a briefing of the day’s activities upon boarding and were separated into sub groups for a more detailed briefing on each of the key target audiences, with both clients and OMD planners talking each group through the audience interests, opportunities and threats in more detail.
Southeastern also talked through the core brand values and offered a history and insight into some of the amazing aspects of the brand, such as the amount of 640,000 passenger journeys SE deliver every week day.
We also took everyone through the evolution of #SEhiddengems, which has grown exponentially every year, through different destinations and media channels. While a success, we are keen to build hidden gems further, expanding it to include people, stories and small businesses.
Once we arrived in Margate, the group headed towards Ziggy’s rooftop bar, overlooking (not so sunny) Margate beach, where the brief, ideas and much more besides were discussed.
All in all, a hugely successful day, with both media owners and Southeastern commenting on what was a unique, exciting and immersive briefing session. We’re excited to get cracking!
