Compound Creativity, Fluent Devices & The Humble Hare
This is the tale of how a regional train operating company used emotional storytelling, with a fluent device at its heart, to build creative effectiveness. They achieved all this, while navigating a hugely challenging macro environment for rail travel…
The hare is the rabbit’s bigger, faster, cousin and the lowlands of East Anglia make for perfect habitats, where most of them hang out.
Whilst known for their speed, relative to their cousin Peter Rabbit, Aesop’s Fables gave ‘brand hare’ a tough rap in that respect (synonymising them with haste and a lack of dedication). One thing we, and Aesop, agree on though: they’re quick, really quick.
From Aesop’s Fable to Norfolk’s Railway
Whilst there’s much debate as to whether Distinctive Brand Assets need pre-existing meaning or not, this is the meaning the teams at Greater Anglia and Atomic chose to derive for their hero: The Red Hare.
What could be a better symbol of ‘fast travel’ for an East Anglia regional rail service? System1’s Distinctive Asset testing demonstrated its speedy and regional credentials.
Today, the hares graze East Anglian land, chomping at the bit for a rematch with Mr Tortoise. This time they’ve got a trick up their sleeve: they’re going to catch the train. They’ll keep the lead that way, even during their nap.
The Fluent Device: Rabbiting on about the same thing, in different entertaining ways
Distinctive Assets are hugely important when it comes to driving brand recognition. They’re shortcuts to your brand: colours, symbols, logos.
Use them consistently throughout consumer touchpoints and, soon enough, you need only show a glimpse of a swoosh and people think Nike, the hint of a smile and Amazon comes to mind.
However, here’s the rub: Distinctive Assets aren’t entertaining in and of themselves. They are brilliant memorability cues, but don’t inherently grab or hold attention.
Enter the Fluent Device: A character (or a recurring scenario) that can be creatively ownable over time.
Our data shows that character fluent devices are amongst the most effective branding devices in advertising. And this is why: they can move and therefore move people. They provide a point of dramatic brand continuity while you say new, interesting and entertaining things. The mere fact the hare can catch a train gives you so much more at your creative disposal than ‘whack the logo on it’.
Fluent Devices allow you to be consistent in your communications through the line. They can be the protagonist of your drama, imbue your brand with personality and appear in fresh entertaining contexts. They enable creative consistency.
For Hare-like speed of recognition, think like the tortoise
Here’s where Mr Tortoise rejoins our tale. Yes, The Red Hare is a mental shortcut to the Greater Anglia brand, but there were no shortcuts to establishing it in people’s minds.
Anyone who’s heard of Hermann Ebbinghaus knows memories decay. It’s marketing’s job to remind people. The timeline on the payback of these things is years, not months. We’ve found the emotional payback on consistency is significant, but you need to stay the course for a minimum of two years to start seeing meaningful, compounding, return.
Greater Anglia and the Atomic team knew they needed to commit to their character. And they have, for six years. They’ve kept the hare alive through dedication: to the same marketing team; the same creative agency and the same measurement throughout that time. They even committed to TV spend over the pandemic, when rail travel was hugely impeded.
This steadfast vision for the brand from those that steward it means that now, in East Anglia, the hare is almost as recognisable as the Norfolk-born Colman’s Bull – which has been around since 1855.
The edge a Fluent Device gives you is that it’s a vehicle for drama. However, it can take time and iteration to craft your device into something that excels at entertaining on screen. That path is not always linear, but it is usually positive.
Greater Anglia’s ads marginally improved in emotional impact from 2021 to 2024 but it was this year that they achieved their breakthrough with a 5.6 Star TV campaign: ‘UNLONDON’. They brought drama to rail travel, with the Hare at its heart.
It’s been a pleasure partnering with the teams and fantastic to see all their hard work paying back. Greater Anglia have seen a +10% increase in positive brand sentiment and since they rolled the hare out in 2019. Their brand growing from strength to strength underpins a train operating company that have recently been awarded as the best in the UK, as the rail industry faces renationalisation.
By applying the tortoise’s long–term thinking and attitude to their hare, Greater Anglia have created a campaign that outperforms the vast majority of category ads for emotional impact and memorability.
Let’s Create with Confidence!
If you’d like to partner to keep on track to a similar effectiveness breakthrough, maybe we can talk ad and distinctive asset testing.
George Webster
Client Development Director, EMEA
+44 7781 100 906
George.webster@system1group.com