Our new super-expressive student campaign for National Express.

University students are a key audience for National Express – a small but valuable portion of their customer base. But many of them haven’t even considered coach travel when they arrive on campus. That’s why it’s vital that National Express can get their face in front of students across the land so that they start to choose this great way to travel. 

With our Express Yourself campaign already well under way, this student-focused work took the attitude of the main campaign and spun it out into a whole new look and more cheeky tone of voice. 

Working with collage artist Barbara Gibson, we created collections of eye-grabbing emotive faces that captured the different positive feelings students might associate with travelling onboard National Express.

Brought to life with simple animation and the backing of a remixed version of Charles Wright’s Express Yourself, these fun faces were soon popping up across carefully targeted digital display and social media. 

We also activated the campaign with interactive games at Freshers’ Fairs, carefully situated out of home in and around campuses, and a tightly focussed audio campaign on Spotify. 

The campaign has been running throughout the academic year and delivered a 60% higher than expected ROI.