How Avanti’s festive safety campaign cut station accidents by 25%

75% were actually at stations. Over half were slips, trips, and falls, some very serious.

But many passengers forget the risks and everyday safety tips – especially at Christmas.

Objectives

Ah, Christmas. We all know the festive season brings parties, packed trains, and plenty of pints.

Unfortunately, it also brings more station accidents.

The Rail Safety & Standards Board (RSSB) say alcohol-related incidents jump 45% over the festive season. It’s officially the worst time of year for station accidents caused by ‘public error and intoxication’ or with ‘alcohol as a possible factor’.

So Avanti’s top priority, with Christmas around the corner? Fewer accidents.

They were also keen to generate more positive social sentiment and media coverage during a challenging news cycle for the rail industry, at a time of strikes, cancellations, and renationalisations.

KPIs

• Behavioural Change
  • Reduce passenger accidents by 10% over the festive season
• Organic Social Media
  • 4% engagement rate
  • 37.5% (or less!) negative sentiment
• Paid Media
  • Awareness (reach and views) among passengers on Avanti’s routes:
    • 625k reach
    • 66k Meta Thruplays
    • 100k YouTube 15-30” Views
• PR
  • 25 media placements (broadcast + editorial)
  • 2 million reach

Strategy

We could only reduce accidents by changing people’s behaviour. So far, this was framed as persuading festive drinkers to follow safety tips.

But could we persuade them to drink less in the first place? The data was promising:

• The proportion of 16-24 year olds not drinking rose from 18% in 2005 to 29% in 2015 (University College London).
• From 2016 to 2020, the low- and no-alcohol drinks market grew over 30%.
• More young people ‘zebra stripe’, alternating alcohol and no-alcohol drinks.

There was a huge opportunity to tap into a cultural shift.

Concept

Our bold idea: don’t just tell people to drink less. Give them an alternative.

A simple swap.

A festive low-alcohol ‘train tinny’.

A PR friendly pale ale.

More than a drink, it could spark a real conversation about safer rail travel.

And in promoting the drink, we could raise awareness of safety tips.

Execution

Like any good Christmas party, this one took logistical and creative skills to pull it all off.

Avanti used their strong community links along the West Coast Main Line route to partner with Birmingham Brewing Company on rebranding their award-winning 0.5% pale ale.

Safety Thirst was born. Designed to look like any other craft beer, but deliver safety messages by stealth.

Ready to be sold on board and in station lounges.

Now, for marketing and PR.

Creative

Our target audience - festive drinkers – seemed very unlikely to respond to a finger-wagging safety message.

We’d need a thumb-stopping social media launch to really drive our safety tips home.

We consulted behavioural scientist Richard Shotton. His advice:

• Make the beer feel exclusive. ‘New’ and ‘limited edition’ drive curiosity.
• Make it an easy swap. No drastic behaviour changes. Encourage drinkers to switch to Safety Thirst after a couple of beers.
• Make safety tips concrete, like ‘hold the handrail’.

We knew ‘funny’ would work more than ‘preachy’, so we landed on launching the beer with a silly music video starring Avanti staff.

We needed an instantly recognisable earworm - within budget. We landed on a public domain classic, and rewrote ‘Jingle Bells’ with jokes and safety tips.

Avanti’s very own staff choir sang it to life in a recording studio.

The music video was inspired by a funny scene from The Grinch:

• A passenger is heading to his train.
• Wherever he goes, the Avanti choir pops up around him, singing safety messages.
• It builds to a big feel-good moment.

The Avanti cast was 30+ people strong, coming from all over the country to a station we chose for its central location. For those on the front line, we had to negotiate their time off, too.

We shot in a real, working train station and couldn’t disrupt trains or passengers.

Any scenes featuring trains were subject to the timetable, giving us just under 2 minutes to get some key shots.

Video in the bag, there were more challenges. The campaign was planned for early December, but the media were focused on ongoing rail strikes, cancellations, Christmas staff shortages, and the nationalisation of another rail line.

Multiple Avanti teams and agencies aligned, including Cubaka, Mischief PR and Broadcast Revolution.

We timed the launch sensitively, in a gap between strikes.

Avanti gave Press Association the exclusive under embargo to build buzz.

And the response was phenomenal.

Results

Rail Safety

• 25% reduction in intoxication-related passenger accidents within four weeks.
• 13% year-on-year decrease in accidents.
• Zero intoxication-related assaults on staff during the 2024 festive period—a 100% decrease.

Organic Social Media

• 53.2k organic reach (Avanti’s four-week average: 11.6k)
• 8.56% LinkedIn engagement rate (industry average: 1-2%)
• 5.25% Instagram engagement rate (industry average: 0.5-2%)
• Only 11.5% negative sentiment (Avanti’s four-week average: 35.3%)

Paid Social Media

• Meta
  • Reach – 1M+ (KPI: 625K)
  • Thruplays – 219K (KPI: 66K)
• YouTube
  • 15-30" Views - 195K (KPI: 100K)

PR

• 328 media placements, all on-message with positive sentiment
• Reach: 22 million (broadcast), 3.1 million (editorial)
• Highlights: ITV, BBC National, BBC Regional, Capital, Capital Xtra, Regional Heart and Smooth, Times Radio, The Independent, Mail Online
• ITN made a TikTok, and Jeremy Vine tweeted!

Beer sales

In addition to Avanti, Birmingham Brewing Company reported a 50% increase

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