Product campaigns

Problem

SplitSave, Digital Railcards and Many Happy Returns each began with something useful but not yet campaign-shaped: a saving mechanic, a digital replacement for a physical card and a social prompt for the journey home at Christmas.

Across all three campaigns, I developed the creative concepts and wrote the copy; final visual production was collaborative.

Constraint

The ideas had to read quickly in small digital formats. That meant making an unfamiliar product or interaction clear without turning the creative into instructions, then protecting the proposition as it moved through short videos, stories, carousels and display formats.

SplitSave

Ticket splitting is easy to over-explain. The prospecting and retargeting work needed to help more people understand that one journey could use multiple tickets and reveal savings, without making the mechanic feel like extra work.

Decision: product mechanics → human benefit

I reduced the proposition to “Get from A to B, cheaper”. The visual explainer paired two journey lines: one travelled straight from A to B, while the other split and revealed a saving at each break. A deliberately compressed A-to-Z line made the same point in a faster form.

For a step-by-step Snapchat story route, the sequence used a ticket, a tap and a lower total. The principle was the same in every version: show the saving before asking someone to understand the ticket logic.

Digital Railcards

The clearest route started with the familiar human problem of a missing physical card: “Where’s my Railcard?”, followed by the search — “Here? Here? Here?” — and the answer: “It’s here!”

The decision was to lead with ease: the Railcard is digital and in the app, all in one place. The value message — saving one third on rail travel — came second. I developed 10-second and 6-second sequences plus accompanying post copy around that order of information.

Many Happy Returns

The Christmas social concept invited people to share a specific happy-return moment using festive Trainline GIF stickers. I explored two routes: a selfie just after booking the journey home, and a selfie while travelling home.

The story made the interaction explicit in three steps: take a selfie; search “Trainline” in GIF search; decorate the image and tag Trainline. The sticker system included animated sprouts, a light-covered home, a suitcase, wreath, candy canes, a present bow, Santa hat and twinkling stars. I wrote the organic story and carousel copy that carried the idea from prompt to participation.

Decision

The common choice across the three campaigns was to begin with the moment a person would recognise — a cheaper journey, a Railcard where they needed it, or the anticipation of travelling home — and let the product explanation follow.

Result

What shipped here is the work itself: distinct creative routes, headlines, short-form sequences and supporting copy for three product campaigns. The gallery uses representative stills from the supplied final motion assets and approved campaign shoot material; no campaign-performance result has been inferred.

What’s next

The same test still applies to product marketing: can someone understand the human value before the format, feature mechanics or channel asks for more attention?