Winners & Shortlists

THE BANNER CONTEST FOR PSYCHOPATHS

TitleTHE BANNER CONTEST FOR PSYCHOPATHS
BrandVOYAGES-SNCF.COM
Product/ServiceTRAVEL
Category B04. TRAVEL, ENTERTAINMENT, LEISURE & RETAIL, INCLUDING E-COMMERCE AND RESTAURANTS
Entrant Company TBWA\PARIS, FRANCE
Advertising Agency TBWA\PARIS, FRANCE
Credits
Name Company Position
Francois Bitouzet Voyages Sncf.com Communication Director
Anne Vincent TBWA PARIS Executive Vice President
Franck Botbol/Hugues Cholez TBWA PARIS Creative Directors
Laure Lagarde/Justine Myard Guidi TBWA PARIS Account Managers
Claire Dubosc/Nicolas Moreau TBWA PARIS Art Directors
Glen Troade/Romain Mallet TBWA PARIS Copywriters
Capucine Gagnez Voyages Sncf.com Advertiser Supervisor

Creative Execution

3 kinds of banners : The ‘24 hours banner’, where users had to grab a moving ticket in the ad for 24 hours non-stop. The ‘1,000,000 clicks banner’, which takes more than 1 full day to achieve with an over trained forefinger. And the ‘587 miles scrolling banner’, in which people had to scroll down for as long as the exact distance between London and Barcelona to have a chance to visit the Spanish city. If not, Alternatively, they could try the ‘465 miles scrolling banner’ to win the train tickets to Geneva.

The final click rate was up to 6 times higher than the average rate in the UK. (587 miles banner : 4,5%, 1 million clicks banner : 2,1%, 24h banner : 2,3%) The average time spent by psychopaths banner players was more than 1 minute (01’19’’) And the most surprising, 7 players managed to finish one of those psychopaths banners. (5 winners for the 24h banners and 2 for 587 miles banner).

In December, RailEurope.com changed to uk.voyage-sncf.com. Compared to Eurostar, for example, the travel website had low awareness (25% vs. 95%), and needed to reposition themselves as the European rail experts. The objective was to drive traffic to uk.voyage-sncf.com and develop strong awareness of the brand in the UK. Our target audience was people interested in European train travel with a strong focus on young Londoners. Our strategy was to launch a strange, unusual and playful contest to win train tickets to European cities with a simple message. The easy way to win train tickets was to go to the brand’s website and answer silly questions. And the other way was to grab the tickets directly from the banners. Which was almost impossible to do. Except for a couple of psychopaths…