The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2023–2024
Eurostar tells a will-they-won't-they romance across five European art styles
Eurostar's brand film plays out a will-they-won't-they romance in five destination-styled illustrations, leaving whether it happened unresolved.
Eurostar Group
What it had to solve
Eurostar wanted a film that would evoke the feeling of possibility that comes with international train travel — the wonder of places you could go and people you could meet — rather than a functional ad about routes and times.
How it works
Eurostar's product is not a seat on a train; it is the feeling that somewhere else is reachable. The task for 'Together We Go Further' was to evoke exactly that — the wonder of places you could go and people you could meet — without turning into a timetables ad.
The film answered with a continent-spanning will-they-won't-they romance, drawn as a whirlwind adventure through five distinct illustrative styles, each evoking the artistic heritage of a destination. Every stop on the journey redraws the story in the visual language of the place, so the couple's progress and the continent's cultures advance together.
The decisive move is the ending. The film never tells the viewer whether what they saw is bound to happen or a visualisation of an unfulfilled future — the question is the point, because the possibility of the journey is what Eurostar sells. The D&AD awards archive keeps the film in its Illustration collection; the page records no audience figures.
Why it lands
- One style per destination lets the art of each place carry the story, so the film shows the continent instead of describing it.
- A will-they-won't-they plot gives the ad stakes and a reason to keep watching across five visual chapters.
- Leaving the ending unresolved sells possibility itself: viewers finish the film imagining the journey rather than checking a route.
- The five distinct styles make craft the spectacle, which is why the work was filed in D&AD's Illustration discipline.
What it did
The unresolved ending became the message: viewers are left questioning whether the story is real or imagined, so the film turns the possibility of a journey into the reason to take it. The D&AD awards archive keeps the work in its Illustration collection; the page records no audience or reach figures.
What you can take
When a brand's product is possibility, keep the plot open: an unresolved romance lets each viewer supply their own journey, which is the feeling being sold.
Since then
The film's unresolved ending became its signature. What survives in the D&AD awards archive is a brand film that sells a continent by drawing it — five styles, one possible future — rather than by listing where the trains go. Because the page records no metrics, the case stands on the mechanism: leave the plot open, and the viewer supplies the journey.
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