The Award for Sustained Marketing Excellence sponsored by Exterion Media

Winner, Gold Award, m1 and m2 – Go South Coast – morebus

The m1 and m2 are a huge success story for Go South Coast’s morebus operation. With focussed marketing efforts, continued investment, and ongoing efforts into improving the customer experience, these routes have seen growth of over 110%. In a competitive environment, there has been over ú15m investment in new vehicles, as well as added extras and improvements to services. Marketing is at the forefront of this story, with essential research, creative campaigns and imperative communications to create a desire for bus travel and to ensure that customers are the priority. These routes, now running up to every three minutes, are a key way to travel across the conurbation.

Winner, Silver Award, Express City Connect – Stagecoach East Scotland

Express City Connect is the jewel in the crown of the Stagecoach East Scotland operation. It is a high profile network recognised by both customers and politicians as playing a vital role in the transport needs of Fife and the surrounding areas. Continual investment in fleet, service provision, infrastructure and promotions rightly place the network at the forefront of developments within the industry and as such a strong ongoing marketing engagement with existing and potential customers is vital. The varied socio-demographic, geographic and seasonal markets served by the Express City Connect network require a wide and varied range of marketing activities in order to create awareness of the network’s reach, the luxury proposition and alignment with customer aspirations in order to achieve modal shift and ultimately improve the customer experience.

Winner, Bronze Award, Bluestar, shining across the city – Go South Coast – Bluestar

Go South Coast’s Bluestar operation has grown significantly in the last few years, increasing service levels and embracing new technologies. Establishing itself as the leading operator in and around Southampton, it always looks out for the needs of its customers, keeping bus travel as simple as possible and offering service with a smile. Its eye-catching marketing campaigns have been essential to this growth.

Finalist, Journeys taken care of – Go North East

From its 10 depots, Go North East serves local communities throughout the region. Around 200,000 people use its services daily, travelling to work or education, visiting friends and family, to socialise, or to visit many of the region’s tourist and leisure attractions. Go North East’s vision of ‘journeys taken of’ is at the core of everything the company does, and it is proud to deliver a service its passengers can rely upon, seeing the company as an integral part of their lives and local communities. It aims to provide an outstanding service that meets all its customers’ needs, with a focus on challenging how this is achieved through leading customer campaigns, the latest technological innovations and offering money for value options.