Title	SWISS FEDERAL RAILWAYS (SBB) SUSTAINABILITY CAMPAIGN
Brand	SWISS FEDERAL RAILWAYS (SBB)
Product/Service	TRANSPORTATION
Category	A05. Media Relations
Entrant Company	ROD KOMMUNIKATION Zürich, SWITZERLAND
Advertising Agency	ROD KOMMUNIKATION Zürich, SWITZERLAND

Name	Company	Position
David Schärer	Rod Kommunikation	Partner and Head of Public Relations
Jan-Hendrik Völker-Albert	Swiss Federal Railways	Director Strategy/Marketing/Sustainability
Myriam Siksou	Swiss Federal Railways	Director Marketing
Elisabeth Schmid	Swiss Federal Railways	Project Manager Social Media
Christina Meier	Swiss Federal Railways	Director Sustainability

The Campaign

How can a company improve its brand image by basing a campaign on a topic that countless other companies are focusing on, yet at the same time strongly influence the customers’ preference? SBB launched a sustainability campaign whose message was heard across the world. The story: for railway embankment maintenance, landscape gardeners and machines are making way for a new type of employee – sheep.

The Brief

The challenge for SBB was to focus on the topic of sustainability in their marketing in an area where competitors had also begun promoting themselves as environmentally aware, green companies. The question facing SBB was how to differentiate the brand in this area.

Execution

In line with the view that “All news are views”, we launched a PR campaign with an article in Switzerland’s biggest newspaper. The key message was: SBB had deployed rare Skudde to take over the maintenance of railway embankments. The hook: the sheep were “hired” as SBB employees. The tone: we painted an idyllic picture of the situation, and focused on the performance of these lovable characters by using indicators such as grass eaten per hour, working hours or how they help to promote biodiversity. We emphasised the efficiency of the animals both in the articles themselves and the accompanying images. A dedicated blog with updates on the sheep was also started.

The campaign provided a huge boost to SBB’s environmental image, which is now at an all-time high. The story about SBB hiring sheep as employees was front-page news in the most widely circulated Swiss newspaper and generated many follow-up stories in other media: print, radio, television and the Internet. We calculated the value of the follow-ups in international media outlets (BBC, USA Today, Die Welt, etc.) to tell another success story in Switzerland. The PR value based on editorial presence totals around USD 1 million. The hashtag #sbbmääh trended on Twitter and was the second-most popular hashtag in Switzerland for a short time.

The Strategy

We chose a strategy that would be a little different – one which would generate a strong PR effect, be well-suited for the Internet, quite different in terms of tone and with a budget of 80 000 CHF.