The client
Metrolink
The brief
To develop a campaign to highlight correct etiquette for passengers travelling on Metrolink based on things that annoy other passengers or are against the byelaws – eating, dropping litter, loud music or phone calls, antisocial behaviour, bags or feet on seats.
The concept
Throughout the development and research stage the word "pet hate" kept cropping up. This got me into thinking how we would show these annoyances in a way which was eye catching but didn't preach to those already being considerate. I explored how it would look if we staged the scenarios for a photographic approach. This would work but the impact was minimal. Then I developed the idea of using animals in replace of the people causing the issue, but sized to fit the environment. These would be surrounded by humans to help give impact.
The animals were selected to best fit with the "pet hate" that it was illustrating.
In order to bring the design to life I commissioned an Illustrator, Adam Cadwell, to produce a series of illustrations based on the brief and identified pet hates. He began by pencilling rough illustrations of the scenes for the 7 pet hates. Once these were approved Adam would move on to the second stage of working each rough into an ink drawing.
For the final output of the illustrations I decided to take a different approach to getting the campaign live and used fridge magnets that would be attached to the back of the Metrolink tram seats in a "gorilla style campaign" these magnets would be attached before the trams left the depot each morning and randomly distributed. This encouraged people to look out for the rest of the set over several weeks and kept the campaign live for longer. We supported these with on stop 6-sheet and A1 posters.
The campaign received a lot of coverage on social media, with people desperate for the missing ones from their set and praising the creative approach and attention to detail. We even had people turn up at our reception to ask for the missing magnet.
Final illustrations
