The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2018–2019
German Rail shows Germans the look-alike paradise at home instead of flying abroad
Ogilvy Germany matched foreign holiday spots with near-identical German landscapes, then personalized ads priced the flight against the €19 train journey.
Deutsche Bahn AG (German Rail)
What it had to solve
Deutsche Bahn needed Germans — 72% of whom flew abroad for holidays — to consider traveling within Germany, where it had to compete not only with other transport but with the fantasy of somewhere exotic.
How it works
Most Germans flew abroad for their holidays, so Deutsche Bahn's challenge was emotional as much as practical — it had to make home feel as desirable as the exotic. Ogilvy Germany answered with a simple side-by-side: one side showed a faraway travel destination, the other a look-alike German place reachable by rail for about €19.
The idea came alive through data and technology. An algorithm first matched foreign destinations with visually similar German landscapes — think Vancouver beside a German highland or a city scene echoed at home. Automated video ads then went further, showing each person the real-time flight price from their own location to the destination they cared about, compared with the cheap fare to its German twin.
The campaign turned 'staycation' from an abstract appeal into a concrete, personalized calculation, and the industry noticed: it took the Media Grand Prix at Eurobest 2019 plus a Gold for social platforms, and was archived by D&AD and the Epica Awards as a reference for data-driven persuasion.
Why it lands
- The look-alike comparison made an abstract argument tangible — seeing a home landscape beside its famous twin closes the distance mentally.
- Personalized real-time prices made the message relevant to each viewer instead of one generic ad.
- The algorithm turned a creative idea into a system that could generate endless local variations.
- Comparing actual flight costs against a cheap train fare gave the persuasion a factual anchor.
What it did
The data-driven comparison took the Media Grand Prix at Eurobest 2019 plus a Gold for use of social platforms, and earned a place in the D&AD Awards archive and the Epica Awards winners archive.
What you can take
A generic claim loses to a personalized comparison: use data to show each person the actual price gap between their dream escape and a home-country substitute they had never imagined.
Since then
No Need to Fly became a widely cited example of data-driven creativity, winning the Eurobest 2019 Media Grand Prix and a social-platform Gold and entering the D&AD and Epica archives. The personalized price-comparison format showed how rail marketing could borrow travel imagery rather than fight it, and Deutsche Bahn continued using domestic-destination campaigns in later years.
Sources
- No Need to Fly – Around the World in Germany | D&AD Awards Archive
- Eurobest 2019 Media winners
- Ogilvy GmbH 'No need to fly - Around the world in Germany'
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card