Train GraphicClick on the map to explore geographics
 
I need help
FAQ
Emergency
About .
Travel & transport from BBC stories as at 10:35 28 Mar 2024
- Man suffers life-threatening injuries after train stabbing
* How do I renew my UK passport and what is the 10-year rule?
* Easter travel warning as millions set to hit roads
Read about the forum [here].
Register [here] - it's free.
What do I gain from registering? [here]
 02/06/24 - Summer Timetable starts
17/08/24 - Bus to Imber
27/09/25 - 200 years of passenger trains

On this day
28th Mar (1992)
MOD Kineton tour, branch line society (*)

Train RunningCancelled
07:43 Swansea to London Paddington
08:30 London Paddington to Weston-Super-Mare
09:00 Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington
09:12 London Paddington to Cardiff Central
09:29 Weston-Super-Mare to London Paddington
09:30 London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads
09:46 Westbury to Swindon
10:15 London Paddington to Cardiff Central
10:30 London Paddington to Weston-Super-Mare
10:41 Cardiff Central to London Paddington
11:00 Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington
11:05 Swindon to Westbury
11:16 London Paddington to Cardiff Central
11:23 Weston-Super-Mare to London Paddington
11:30 London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads
11:50 Cardiff Central to London Paddington
12:15 London Paddington to Cardiff Central
12:17 Westbury to Swindon
12:30 London Paddington to Weston-Super-Mare
13:15 Swindon to Westbury
14:19 Westbury to Swindon
15:14 Swindon to Westbury
Short Run
06:00 London Paddington to Penzance
07:03 London Paddington to Paignton
07:28 Cardiff Central to Portsmouth Harbour
07:33 Weymouth to Gloucester
09:45 Bristol Temple Meads to Salisbury
09:50 Cardiff Central to London Paddington
10:35 London Paddington to Exeter St Davids
10:55 Paignton to London Paddington
11:12 Salisbury to Bristol Temple Meads
11:23 Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff Central
Delayed
06:05 Penzance to London Paddington
06:37 Plymouth to London Paddington
07:10 Penzance to London Paddington
07:20 Swansea to London Paddington
07:48 London Paddington to Swansea
08:03 London Paddington to Penzance
08:23 Southampton Central to Bristol Temple Meads
08:23 Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff Central
08:35 Plymouth to London Paddington
08:48 London Paddington to Swansea
09:04 London Paddington to Plymouth
09:30 Weymouth to Gloucester
09:37 London Paddington to Paignton
10:04 London Paddington to Penzance
10:05 Bristol Temple Meads to Filton Abbey Wood
10:23 London Paddington to Oxford
11:03 London Paddington to Plymouth
PollsOpen and recent polls
Closed 2024-03-25 Easter Escape - to where?
Abbreviation pageAcronymns and abbreviations
Stn ComparatorStation Comparator
Rail newsNews Now - live rail news feed
Site Style 1 2 3 4
Next departures • Bristol Temple MeadsBath SpaChippenhamSwindonDidcot ParkwayReadingLondon PaddingtonMelksham
Exeter St DavidsTauntonWestburyTrowbridgeBristol ParkwayCardiff CentralOxfordCheltenham SpaBirmingham New Street
March 28, 2024, 10:47:38 *
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Forgotten your username or password? - get a reminder
Most recently liked subjects
[193] West Wiltshire Bus Changes April 2024
[109] would you like your own LIVE train station departure board?
[75] Return of the BRUTE?
[59] Infrastructure problems in Thames Valley causing disruption el...
[46] Reversing Beeching - bring heritage and freight lines into the...
[26] CrossCountry upgrade will see 25% more rail seats
 
News: the Great Western Coffee Shop ... keeping you up to date with travel around the South West
 
   Home   Help Search Calendar Login Register  
Pages: [1]
  Print  
Author Topic: Introducing Wes and Sandy - SWR's growth ambassadors  (Read 1751 times)
grahame
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 40690



View Profile WWW Email
« on: April 15, 2022, 11:31:55 »

From earlier this week ... SWR» (South Western Railway - about) explain their bounce back plans:

Quote
Dear [mailing list member],

As you may have already seen, South Western Railway (SWR) has been the first of the Train Operating Companies to launch a dedicated campaign aimed at encouraging commuters back onto the train as we look to build back better after the pandemic.

Featuring our two new avian ambassadors Wes and Sandy, this campaign is based on detailed research into people’s working habits post-Covid and the shift towards working from home. Understanding this shift and how people will work in the future is particularly relevant for SWR as a network, as the demographics of the communities we serve show a greater number of people work in roles which can be carried out from home.

Our campaign is aimed at commuters and those who have a choice as to whether they work from home or travel to their workplace, with the aim to “nudge” them back into making additional journeys.
 
The campaign will include adverts on TV, radio, websites and streaming services, and social media, as well as in print and at our stations. Through the various mediums and channels used, we will be focussing on how returning to the office can help people to better connect with their colleagues and friends in person, both during the working day and socialising afterwards. This, as well as career progression, were clear themes from our research about what people miss about pre-Covid work life.

The importance of this campaign to SWR is clear, given that commuting and other peak time travel has always been a significant part of our business. Without encouraging more people to return to travelling with us, our revenue will remain significantly below what it was pre-Covid and mean continued pressure to alter or reduce the number of services we run to ensure we are supplying a right sized service of best value to taxpayers.
 
As well as the main campaign with Wes and Sandy, we will also look at running further promotional opportunities over the coming months to try and further encourage people back onto the railway. This includes the “Thank Goodness it’s Thursday” campaign we launched last week, which has already generated significant media interest and will run throughout April.Please do feel free to take part in this campaign over the coming Thursdays and share details with colleagues or others you think may benefit from it.

If you have any questions about our campaigns or the research which has supported them, please do let us know. 

Kind regards,
Andrew Ardley
Regional Development Manager
 
Context

Commuting and other travel into London at peak time has historically been the core part of the SWR business, accounting for over half of our revenue pre-Covid

How we work has been fundamentally altered by the pandemic and the recovery of commuting and business travel are?languishing?behind the?recovery seen in the leisuremarket

Without any intervention,?this trend is forecast to continue.?Research shows that commuting and business travel will remain significantly below pre-Covid levels, leading to a permanent reduction of revenue to rail and increasing the likelihood of further rail service reductions in the future

SWR is more exposed to this shift than others due to the demographic profile of our customers, being in more senior roles that can be carried out from home.

An opportunity exists to 'nudge' some customers to start making and/or make more peak-time journeys than at present and we have aimed to create an advertising campaign to encourage this, through:
 
Highlighting the professional, social, and cultural opportunities of returning to the office (which our research has shown people miss the most when working from home); and

Raising awareness of benefits like flexible season tickets and our Price Promise Guarantee to emphasise the positive experience people will have travelling with us

This campaign will run throughout the year, with the flexibility to allow us to use Wes and Sandy to focus on different offers or promotions as needed
Logged

Coffee Shop Admin, Acting Chair of Melksham Rail User Group, Option 24/7 Melksham Rep
GBM
Transport Scholar
Hero Member
******
Posts: 1468


View Profile Email
« Reply #1 on: April 15, 2022, 11:47:49 »

The apparent growth in social traffic isn't relevant to TOC (Train Operating Company)'s then!
It seems as if commuting has decreased markedly, whilst social traffic is markedly up, but SWR» (South Western Railway - about) are still looking to market commuting?
Logged

Personal opinion only.  Writings not representative of any union, collective, management or employer. (Think that absolves me...........)
Red Squirrel
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 5190


There are some who call me... Tim


View Profile
« Reply #2 on: April 15, 2022, 14:48:27 »

And here they are: https://youtu.be/qsztO2d9KaM
Logged

Things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.
Mark A
Global Moderator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 1300


View Profile
« Reply #3 on: April 15, 2022, 15:27:56 »



Script: Sandy: "Thought you'd migrated"
             Wes: "I wish!"
 Huh

Putting that to one side... a pigeon and a seagull... Ew. Often encountered on the railway and seldom in a good way. Both known to be able to bring 25kV electrification to a halt.

Thinking of 'The pigeon in a carriage on the deep level tube incident' too, that's unlikely to have ended well either.

Mark
Logged
Mark A
Global Moderator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 1300


View Profile
« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2023, 15:15:29 »

Sandy and Wesley... the agency's account of their gestation.

They'll soon have been with us for a year, and it still strikes me as odd for a railway company to be ok to have its passengers represented by two species that in combination with city living can be problematic and can cause serious issues with station structures.

https://www.stlukes.co.uk/south-western-railway

Mark
Logged
Mark A
Global Moderator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 1300


View Profile
« Reply #5 on: May 10, 2023, 12:48:03 »

Also see recent thread on railways' carriage, as a cargo, of feathers. Put in mind of an RSPCA chap's comment regarding a worse-for-wear rescue pigeon. "They don't hang on to their feathers"...

Mark
Logged
Do you have something you would like to add to this thread, or would you like to raise a new question at the Coffee Shop? Please [register] (it is free) if you have not done so before, or login (at the top of this page) if you already have an account - we would love to read what you have to say!

You can find out more about how this forum works [here] - that will link you to a copy of the forum agreement that you can read before you join, and tell you very much more about how we operate. We are an independent forum, provided and run by customers of Great Western Railway, for customers of Great Western Railway and we welcome railway professionals as members too, in either a personal or official capacity. Views expressed in posts are not necessarily the views of the operators of the forum.

As well as posting messages onto existing threads, and starting new subjects, members can communicate with each other through personal messages if they wish. And once members have made a certain number of posts, they will automatically be admitted to the "frequent posters club", where subjects not-for-public-domain are discussed; anything from the occasional rant to meetups we may be having ...

 
Pages: [1]
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.2 | SMF © 2006-2007, Simple Machines LLC Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!
This forum is provided by customers of Great Western Railway (formerly First Great Western), and the views expressed are those of the individual posters concerned. Visit www.gwr.com for the official Great Western Railway website. Please contact the administrators of this site if you feel that the content provided by one of our posters contravenes our posting rules (email link to report). Forum hosted by Well House Consultants

Jump to top of pageJump to Forum Home Page