Double-truck ad presents a stunning look at locomotives

The ZTR Rail division has been working on railway offerings, aimed at helping North American railways improve their adoption of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), which the group was ready to roll out at the Railway Interchange Conference and Exhibition, the largest railroad event in North America. A visually stimulating image created by ZTR for the conference has earned the top prize in the “Print Design” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

PSR is a service model designed to streamline railroad operations. ZTR recognized that PSR success relied on asset management as well as wagon movement, which its solutions are designed to deliver. To showcase the initiative’s alignment with industry goals, the media team created a railway depiction to be published as a double-truck ad in Progressive Railroading magazine’s September edition, timed to coincide with the conference; the image also served as the backdrop for ZTR’s presence at the conference.

“Our objective was to highlight what the next frontier for the rail industry could be—to reframe it from dirty and industrial, to freedom and exploration,” ZTR explains. The image is striking in part because the landscape colors are muted while the colors of the machinery are enriched. The spread depicts the two types of rail equipment ZTR targets, with an overlay showing how the technology is easy to use and ideally adapted. The imagery was designed specifically to counteract messages from competitors, demonstrating a more forward-thinking approach.

The campaign is new and measurement is still underway, but the company saw an 80% increase in web traffic since the conference.

Congratulations to James Greenhill, Colleen Burghardt, Dawn Lyons and Daniel Goldberg.