Ashlie Allen

Said the following about Public Relations for Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR):

“As Public Relations manager for GTR, Alice has worked through a testing year to deliver inspiring campaigns across a multitude of different sectors – whether this be for women working in the rail industry, suicide prevention for The Samaritans, campaigns for LGBTQ+ as part of Brighton Pride parade or her work for the first ever ‘Line residencies’ for Great Northern and Southern Rail.

A constant pleasure to work with, Alice led her team at Launch PR to bring to life GTR’s first ever influencer campaign: Line Residents. The campaign saw the development of a major influencer content campaign to help both Great Northern and Southern Rail authentically and credibly engage with customers as they work hard to transform the entire network.

The creative heart of this campaign celebrated the power of journeys by sharing the positive transformations that can happen on them (and at the end of them). By doing so, the team inspired transformation on customers’ personal journeys (whilst putting a spotlight on the transformations happening across the network).

The execution involved six influencers across different sectors, all of whom were tasked with generating six pieces of ‘transformational content’ each – inspired by their own ‘transformational journeys’ on the network – that engaged and rung true to their followers. This campaign saw 35 pieces of original content produced over six months, ensuring the campaign had maximum impact across social, digital and PR channels.

The campaign faced challenges recorded in the news agenda parallel to the Line Residents activation, such as new and changing timetables, inevitable engineering work, overcrowding, price variances, fare increases and delays; all leading to frustration and consumer dissatisfaction. Despite this, Alice led the team effectively, working with wider agency to come up with creative and positive new content to seed out across platforms.

Messaging and narrative were crafted to highlight the brilliant, transformational work GTR were (and continue) to develop such as new routes, more capacity and greater frequency.

The campaign resulted in 35 blog posts, four youtube-style vlogs, and 15 interviews with varying experts. On social media, the campaign along generated over 4,000 likes, 60 retweets, 2,600 story views, 202 comments (all with neutral or positive sentiment) and a reach of just under 1.5 million.“