The Brief
The Glasgow Subway, owned and operated by SPT, has been helping Glaswegians get around the city for more than 125 years. It remains one of the quickest ways to do so, though there are now many other ways to travel – such as by car.
We were asked to help put the Subway back on Glaswegians’ radars – highlighting its place in the history, culture, and day-to-day life of the city and its citizens.
The line would be ‘My Glasgow, my subway’, and our campaign needed to bring that line to life in an engaging, memorable, and persuasive way.
The Insight
We realised that ‘My Glasgow, my subway’ was tailor-made for a campaign which was first-person, personal, and ultimately testimonial in nature.
What better way to tell the story of what the subway does, and the difference it makes to peoples’ lives, than to tell the stories of Glaswegians’ day-to-day lives – and the integral part the subway plays in them.
Work
We created 15 ads – 1 for each station on the subway network. For each station there would be a Radio ad and an Out of Home ad. The 15 radio ads played on-air in the same sequence as if you were going around the circular route of the railway. They played in pairs – with one at the start of the ad break, and the next at the end of the ad break. Not only did this allow us to tell interconnecting stories from 2 perspectives, but it also illustrated the speed and ease of the subway – with the ads going from one station to the next in just a few minutes, like the subway itself.
The Out of Home ads were created using dozens of photographs of historic landmarks around each of the 15 stations. Not only did this reinforce the fact that the subway is also a part of Glasgow’s history and landscape, it helped people locate the subway geographically using these above-ground waypoints. The peoples’ stories featured in the OOH ads reflected those in the relevant radio ad, to interconnect and reinforce the two parts of the campaign.
The colour palette was the same as the subway – grey, white and orange – using monochrome photographs of the people and places, combined with vivid orange graphics. This, and the deconstructed mosaic style, gave the designs a very eye-catching and contemporary design. To reflect the interconnectedness of the subway, and the ads, each featured a bold orange line which travelled through the scene from left to right. Modern, dynamic, yet unmistakably Glaswegian, they perfectly encapsulated the message.
