Cheeky Character Miles Is Back for East Midlands Railway's 'Let's Roll' Campaign

East Midlands Railway (EMR) has launched its second brand campaign under the creative platform ‘Let’s Roll’ featuring the brand’s loveable character, Miles.  

The campaign, created by Atomic London alongside award-winning director J Marlow from Outsider follows last year’s successful launch of Miles for EMR’s new franchise unveiling. This time though, Miles is bigger and better than ever before and has been bought into the real world accompanied by his own crew, a killer backing track and a cheeky personality to match.  

The last couple of years have been especially challenging for train operators. Now more than ever it is important to promote both commuter and leisure travel for the EMR Mainline and Connect regions. With this in mind, two separate versions of the ad were produced, one showing Miles on a leisurely day trip into London and the other showing Miles and his gang on their daily commute to showcase the rail network that connects the Midlands to London. 

In the commuter spot we see Miles with a spring in his step as he walks down the street towards the train station, tapping his morning paper along the wooden fence and humming the recognisable, upbeat, feel-good tune ‘Proud Mary’ by Tina Turner. Miles is joined by other commuters and early risers who can’t help but join in with a morning boogie. 

Love for Miles has been widespread across the entire brand. So much so that one EMR staff member’s son asked for a Miles teddy for Christmas. He features in the 10” cut down and yes, his mum did knit him his very own Miles toy! 

Jenna Cowie, head of revenue and marketing at EMR said, “We wanted this next advert to be bigger and better than the one before, taking Miles into the real world enabled us to showcase our trains, stations, EMR staff and the fantastic leisure destinations we serve. We know sound is so important to getting noticed and most importantly remembered, therefore finding a really iconic track to accompany Miles was key to creating an ownable and distinctive advert. What will Miles do next…”

The full campaign launches on 10th October and will feature across the entire customer journey including TV, social, digital and OOH.