Jane Wharam

Said the following about The Brighton Main Line Improvement Project Joint Communications Team:

“Network Rail’s South East route needed to close the Brighton Main Line (BML), one of the busiest in the country, between Three Bridges and Brighton and Three Bridges and Lewes for nine days in February 2019 for a vital £67m upgrade of track, stations, signalling systems and security.

Not only did the joint communications team have to manage travel demand and offer alternative options for passengers, but also to inform all stakeholders that we’d changed the blockade dates. We therefore drew up a robust, phased marketing & communications strategy and partnered with colleagues at Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) to achieve our joint objectives, which were to:

• Create instantly-recognisable branding for all our messaging (Sammy the Seagull) that would tell stakeholders what the communication was about and give them confidence in the consistency and accuracy of our communications

• Achieve at least 80% awareness of the closure among passengers travelling on the BML – up to 40,000 people every day

• Encourage a mix of behaviour change amongst passengers, including suppressing travel demand by at least 25% and highlighting alternative modes of travel (or not travelling) and the benefits of travelling at different times

• Drive passengers to online information tools, such as a dedicated travel advice site, National Rail Enquiries and Twitter

• Identify relevant stakeholders apart from passengers – businesspeople, politicians, colleagues, lineside neighbours etc – and manage the impact on them

• Source, deliver and signpost alternative ways for passengers to travel during the blockade

• Put the needs of passengers first

The integrated team worked together on every aspect of the campaign, from social media to bus hub, volunteer/brand ambassador training and deployment, marketing and stakeholder engagement.

Challenges

Our audience was extremely diverse, ranging from season-ticket-holding commuters, leisure passengers, occasional business travellers, MPs in the affected areas, colleagues within our own and the various supply chain organisations involved in the closure (many of whom were commuters), tourism organisations, local businesses in the affected areas and people who lived near where the 24/7 work was going to be carried out.

The original dates of the closure had been changed from weekdays in October 2018 and February 2019 to just nine days in February plus several weekends until May 2019, but this decision was not taken until July 2018, so not only had the original dates been published, it was very late in the day to change the message.

Many passengers had endured multiple weekends of works that they felt had not produced any tangible benefits, so were asking why this closure should be any better - and potentially much more disruptive. They also didn’t understand why the work was so vital or why it could only be carried out over such a long period.

The closure dates were prime time for families travelling with their children from Brighton to London and vice versa. It was understandably a cause for concern for businesses in the Brighton area that this group might just not travel during the closure

Setting up a sufficiently large bus hub to accommodate even 75% of 40,000 passengers was a mammoth task. Not only did the team have to close the car park at Three Bridges, inform passengers and drivers of alternative options and build a hub from scratch but they then had to find, muster, train and deploy an army of brand ambassadors to work there throughout the nine days

Many passengers drive to stations nearer London, such as Three Bridges, park there and then get the train, but we were closing the car park at Three Bridges to turn it into our bus replacement hub

Not all employers in the affected areas offer flexible working, so we had to persuade them to allow employees to work from home and/or persuade the workers to take that week off so that it wasn't an issue

Most passengers don’t differentiate between Network Rail and the train operating company, which has traditionally been difficult for us; we have had to think of ourselves as one team, which is a decided step-change

What the team delivered

The first thing we did was to build a memorable brand - Sammy the Seagull, chosen after extensive research and marketing analysis - who was on every piece of communication we produced and became the 'face' of the campaign. We then planned a high-impact passenger information campaign across 7 phases. The outputs for this included:

• On-station vinyl’s and/or banners across all phases at 18 key impacted stations

• Leaflets across all the phases (over 1 million of these were printed and distributed during the campaign)

• On-train advertising across 400 sites (Southern and Thameslink trains)

• On-train destination panel advertising on the Thameslink class 700s

• Face-to-face brand ambassador activity at stations throughout the campaign

• The deployment of Brand Ambassadors at the bus hub to help passengers

• DR posters across phases of the campaign in over 140 impacted stations

• A press campaign across all phases of the campaign

• Advertisements in 14 x regional press over a 4-week period

• A radio commercial across local radio stations in Surrey and Sussex

• Gate line advertising at Brighton, Littlehampton, Three Bridges, Lewes and Haywards Heath stations

• A team of volunteers from GTR and NR, who were at key stations to illustrate the collaboration between the two companies and assist passengers with enquiries and wayfinding

• Surprise and delight ‘giveaways’ were distributed during the latter phases of the campaign

• There was additional face-to-face activity to promote Gatwick car parking arrangements

• There was a dedicated information stand at the ‘bus hub’ during the 9-day closure

• The team built the largest bus replacement service ever mounted in Europe at Three Bridges station

• Branded destination signs for all buses to clearly indicate which stations were being served

• Branded wayfinding signage to help passengers find bus stops

• Branded road signage to assist passengers driving to alternative parking at Gatwick Airport

• We 'wrapped' a double decker bus with ‘Sammy the Seagull’ branding, which was used on replacement services

• Regular customer relationship management (CRM) emails were issued with an average open rate of 75%

• In the ‘thank you for your patience’ phase, we produced posters at all impacted stations and vinyl’s at 18 key stations which show Sammy saluting, rather than watching

• A booklet of vouchers donated by local businesses, which will be handed out in May for passengers to spend once the work is completed, and a variety of online activity, including information on the website and a Twitter campaign

Stakeholders

The team formed many new relationships providing understanding of the work we were doing and gained new support by making dedicated presentations to Business Associations, Chambers of Commerce, Local Economic Partnerships, Gatwick Airport, rail user groups, lineside neighbours, tourism bodies along the route and key London business groups. We also sent

We also sent regular email updates to stakeholders, produced a business toolkit, sent a joint newsletter once a month to MPs on the affected areas of the line, thanked all stakeholders for their support and positive engagement, provided a team of volunteers to support the Brighton Half Marathon, donated benches from the bus hub to local charities nominated by stakeholders and sent regular email updates to the local community

Digital engagement

• Set up a dedicated twitter account with 3,200 followers

• Undertook a pro-active social media engagement with GTR channels

• Set up a dedicated website with 6,000 visitors per day

• Set up a dedicated Travel Advice section on the website with detailed information on 140 impacted station

• We kept colleagues informed through daily stories on both our intranets and Yammer channels and sent out a dedicated newsletter on the closure before, during and after the blockade

• We also made several films

The results:

• February 2019's Travel Focus survey showed a 90% awareness of the closure amongst users of the BML

• The same survey showed a 95% understanding the implications of the work

• The number of passengers travelling during the week fell by 40% (against a target of 25%)

• Unprecedented levels of positive feedback from passengers using the rail replacement services

• Positive media feedback from previously hostile outlets

• There were 19.4 million impressions tagging @brighton_line on Twitter over the nine-day blockade period alone and 226 emails to the dedicated email address over the same period

• There were more than 15,000 visits to the microsite between November 2018 and March 2019

• 22 CRM emails were sent to 220 organisations on the affected part of the line for onward cascade“