March 27th, 2019

Bus and Coach Sector Engagement

Our client, Gauntlet Group, has been a major insurance broker in the bus and coach sector for nearly 25 years, but wanted to find a means through which it could engage with bus and coach operators and individual drivers.

To help it to do this, Catapult took a Gauntlet advertising strap-line of ‘Going the Extra Mile’ and devised its own ‘Extra Mile Quiz’. We know only too well that bus and coach drivers are competitive, always looking out for each others’ logos and liveries and typically up for a challenge, particularly if that’s something they can put their minds to when parked up and waiting for their passengers.

To satisfy their thirst for a bit of anorak-behaviour now and then, we invented the ‘Extra Mile Quiz’ and a character of Cody McCoach, who loves to travel around, visiting coach operators the length and breadth of the country.

What he’s also very good at is delivering cryptic clues that allow the identities of coach operators to be revealed, once solved. Of course, Cody doesn’t exist, but Catapult has become adept at putting in the hard yards, visiting the websites of operators, looking at their liveries and back-stories and creating the clues that form the basis of the quiz. All of this is done to a logical itinerary that Cody McCoach follows!

This quiz is so popular, it is now on edition 3 with a fourth in the pipeline! We have to hold keen coach operators back when it comes to checking if they are correct, until all have had a chance to enter. Due to its popularity, we now not only use the quiz as an insert in bus and coach sector publication, Route One, but also put it up online as well, at www.busandcoachinsurance.com

It’s quite a success story for a different approach to PR in the coach tourism sector.