Students – a potentially big audience for train tickets. Those dirty clothes won’t get home on their own.But they’re an audience with little spare change. Especially after a big night out. So CrossCountry offered them a special discount. Unfortunately, they’re not exactly known for paying much attention. So how did we get the message across?We created a campaign with virtually no branding or mention of trains. Just a URL to our Facebook page. Here, students could shop their cheapskate mates to win prizes and see something else really cheap – train tickets from CrossCountry.

First we rolled out a clean graffiti campaign across universities. Then we created a series of viral videos and distributed them to bloggers.The URL on these pieces sent them to the Facebook page, where they could find a competition. We asked students to upload stories of their cheapskate mates and vote for the best.The page had subtle branding of CrossCountry, showing how their train tickets were just as cheap as the entrants. A final burst of posters hammered home this message.

Our multi-channel Cheapskate mate campaign hit a large number of students on a national level and through social media and PR alone we reached a total online audience of over 6 million people. As a result, this campaign increased traffic to the CrossCountry NUS site by over 60%, with revenue increasing by over 40%.