Northern, with support from Creative Race, is launching a new TV advert as part of a major campaign designed to get more people out of their cars and back onto trains.
The new advert forms the centrepiece of Northern’s latest awareness campaign, which puts the spotlight on how train travel fits modern lives, whether that’s heading into the office a few days a week, working shifts, studying, or getting out for leisure activities.
Featuring snapshots of real people and real places from all across the North of England, as well as the odd Northern trope such as not wearing a coat, the campaign aims to celebrate the operator’s “proud place as a piece of the fabric of the North.”
The appropriately named Alex Hornby, commercial and customer director at Northern, said: “This new campaign reflects our pride in serving the North, celebrating its places and its people and shows how the railway is integral to our communities and in modern life – whether you’re commuting, meeting friends, heading to an event or exploring somewhere new.
“People don’t travel for just one reason anymore. The same train might take you to work one day and on a day out the next. We want customers to think of the train first for their travels across the north and leave the car behind whenever they can.”
The advert celebrates the character, warmth and diversity of the North: capturing familiar moments and micro-interactions that happen on Northern trains every day, set against the
backdrop of the region’s landscapes and cities.
“Us Northerners are characters by nature, so making an ad that truly celebrates this was a joy to work on,” added Olivia Downing, creative director at CreativeRace. “We worked closely with the MOB and our director, Steve Cope to ensure we captured the diverse range of Northern customers, as well as the variety of the landscapes themselves.”
The new advert will run across TV, video-on-demand and online platforms, supported by outdoor advertising, social media and digital channels across Northern’s network, with a particular focus on major routes into cities including Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield.
Northern is the second largest train operator in the UK, with 2,650 services a day to more than 500 stations across the North of England. The largest, as any trainspotters reading are doubtless already aware, is London and the South East’s Govia Thameslink Railway, which won its franchise from First Capital Connect back in 2014. Northern came into existence in 2020, when the Department for Transport took over running the Arriva Trains North network following the termination of its franchise.
