TRIBERA WINS GOLD FOR BEST TRAVEL CAMPAIGN AT THE PERFORMANCE MARKETING AWARDS
The week between Christmas and New Year is when most of the country switches off. We spent it building a campaign that's now won Gold at the Performance Marketing Awards.
Mind the Twixmas Gap, our campaign for West Midlands Railway, took home Gold for Best Travel Campaign last week. It beat some serious competition in the category, and we're still buzzing about it.
The bit that matters more than the trophy is what the campaign actually proved. When you start with behavioural insight instead of a discount, the numbers look very different.
What was the Mind the Twixmas Gap campaign?
Twixmas is a structural problem for rail operators. Commuters aren't commuting. Leisure travel slows. Demand drops. The usual response is to discount tickets and hope for the best.
We didn't want to do that. So we commissioned research into what people are actually doing during that strange week between Christmas and New Year. The answer was almost universal. People mentally switch off. They overindulge, stay home, lose track of what day it is, and avoid making plans.
That gave us our platform. We took the most recognisable phrase in British rail and reframed it. Mind the Gap became Mind the Twixmas Gap, a cultural prompt to bridge the emotional pause between Christmas and the new year by getting out, seeing people, and rediscovering the region.
What results did the campaign deliver?
Running from 15th December to 5th January, with the 50% off-peak day return offer live from 27th December, the campaign delivered:
- 393,197 journeys during the live sale window
- £905,963 in revenue
- 19% year-on-year growth in journeys during a historically low-demand period
- 41% increase in new customer acquisition
- 46% of purchasers had not planned to travel before seeing the campaign
- 89% of people surveyed felt more favourable towards WMR after the campaign
- 77% said they were more likely to travel by train in future
That 46% figure is the one we keep coming back to. Nearly half the people who bought a ticket weren't planning to travel at all until the campaign reached them. That's not a redistribution of existing demand. That's new demand, created by a story.
Why did the campaign win Best Travel Campaign?
Sheridan Okey, our Head of PR, helped shape the campaign from the earliest strategic thinking through to the platform itself.
"This was an idea we proactively put forward, and one I genuinely believed in from the start. What I'm most proud of is that the campaign wasn't built around the discount as the hero. The strategy positioned storytelling and cultural relevance first, and used integrated channels to create motivation before conversion. That's a very different starting point than most travel campaigns, and the results show why it works."
The other thing worth saying out loud is that this campaign happened because the client backed the vision. West Midlands Railway's marketing team, led by Laura Donnelly, Head of Marketing and Sales and Jodee Dale, Marketing Campaigns & Promotions, trusted us to push past the obvious answer. That trust is what makes work like this possible. Plenty of agencies have good ideas. Far fewer get to ship them.
What can other marketers learn from this campaign?
Most categories have a Twixmas. A period where demand structurally drops and the default move is to discount your way through it. Retail has January. Hospitality has midweek. B2B has August. Every brand we work with has a version of this problem.
The lesson from Mind the Twixmas Gap isn't that you should run a cultural campaign at Christmas. It's that the assumption underneath most low-demand periods is wrong. The barrier usually isn't price. It's behaviour. And behaviour shifts when you give people a reason that's bigger than a percentage off.
If you're planning a campaign for a quiet quarter right now, that's the question worth asking. What are your customers actually doing instead of buying from you? Once you know that, the campaign almost writes itself.
Huge thanks to the team at WMR for backing the idea, to our media partners Anything is Possible for amplifying it, and to everyone at Tribera who built this with us.
Congratulations to all the other winners and finalists on the night. It was a strong category and we're proud to have come out on top.
Want to talk about what an insight-led campaign could look like for your brand? Get in touch with the Tribera team. We'd rather have one good conversation than send you a deck.
Who won Best Travel Campaign at the Performance Marketing Awards?
Tribera and West Midlands Railway won Gold for Best Travel Campaign at the Performance Marketing Awards for Mind the Twixmas Gap, a campaign repositioning the week between Christmas and New Year as a travel opportunity.
What was the strategy behind Mind the Twixmas Gap?
The campaign was built on behavioural insight rather than price. Commissioned research showed that during Twixmas, people mentally switch off, overindulge and stay home. The campaign created motivation to travel first, then introduced the 50% off-peak day return offer as the enabler.
How much revenue did the campaign generate?
£905,963 in revenue from 393,197 journeys during the live sale window between 27th December and 5th January, delivering 19% year-on-year growth in a historically low-demand period.
Who worked on the campaign?
Tribera led strategy and creative. West Midlands Railway commissioned the work, with the in-house team led by Laura Donnelly and Jodee Dale. Anything is Possible (AIP) handled media buying and broadcast partnerships.
