Parker Pens

The world renowned pen and a Big Red Bus!

Parker is well known globally for their beautifully crafted penmanship. The brand wanted to communicate to a younger demographic, alongside their traditional audience, and asked Ghost to develop a dialogue between them and young adults across the UK.

With our innovative approach and an experience of youth markets, we decided that the best way to do this was by creating branded promotional events that featured during fresher’s week across the top universities throughout the UK. To keep in style with the brand’s long standing British heritage we hired an iconic red bus and branded it with artwork that featured the British flag made entirely from Parker Pens. We knew that we needed to attract the students to the bus so we created a competition that enabled the students to put pen to paper and express some of their great ideas. Ideas that could help fellow students (particularly freshers), with advice on money saving tricks, how to revise work or even how to be lucky in love. Along with the competition each student who entered also left with a Parker Pen.

We expected to reach around 90,000 students, but through the campaigns duration we reached over 140,000 students. This was through great online marketing and some amazing brand ambassador work on the road. We also had 2,000 students that either entered the competition or expressed a need for further offers via the website.

This was primarily an experiential campaign with digital support and a great way to highlight the Britishness of the brand and its London link, all built around a Big Red Bus.

Anthony Davies-Jones, Client Director