Northern Trains. We're Northern, just like you.​

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the challenge.  Northern Trains had a perception problem. Despite improvements to the service, many people across the North still associated the brand with poor performance, inconvenience and bad value, choosing to drive instead. Our task was to drive Northern's first major brand campaign in years, changing peoples’ sentiment toward the company by reminding them that behind the logo was a brand that genuinely understood Northerners. 

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the work. Our insight was that Northern didn't need to convince people it was perfect. They just needed to remind people it was one of them. The campaign, We're Northern, Just Like You, celebrated the shared quirks, routines and behaviours that make life in the North unique, creating an emotional connection before getting too train heavy.

As Creative Director, I was responsible for shaping the creative vision for the campaign - leading my team's first TV commercial from concept through to production. Knowing our agency hadn't produced a TV campaign for some time, I brought in production company MOB film, to help realise the ambition of the idea and ensure we delivered a film worthy of a regional brand with national visibility.

I oversaw the development of a fully integrated campaign spanning TVC, OOH, PR, radio, social and digital. The TV ad became the creative heart of the platform, with photography captured on set feeding directly into the wider campaign to create consistency across every touchpoint. The result was a long-term brand platform that felt authentic, distinctive and unmistakably Northern.

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the results. The campaign exceeded the travel category benchmark in System1 testing, achieving a 3.5-star rating and significantly outperforming Northern's previous brand campaigns. The client was so happy with our photography, that this style then went on to inform wider look and feel of the Northern brand – supporting with the photography-first approach as they move to Great British Rail (GBR). Most importantly though, it proved that leading with emotion rather than functional messaging created stronger connections with audiences: validating the strategic shift towards storytelling rooted in regional identity.

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