European high-speed rail service Eurostar is combining social media with outdoor advertising to support the launch of a new route on the continent.
The headline-grabbing move will apparently be driven by real-time updates from users on Facebook and Twitter appearing on over 350 digital screens around London and the South East of the UK, the target market for its new service across the channel to Amsterdam.
Those working behind the scenes on the creative for the digital screens (agency Cloud and Compass) will be streaming in messages from passengers and posting pictures and other content from social networks.
A campaign with competitions to drum up interest in the new route is running on a microsite called EurostarLive.
Of course, Eurostar is no daft enough to allow passengers to share any thoughts they may have about Eurostar with thousands of potential customers.
Clearly learning from the December 2009 debacle, when services were massively disrupted when a number of trains broke down between the UK and France, with passengers turning to social media to vent their anger, Eurostar admits the "live" element is not exactly, well, live.
There will be a delay as the agency monitors messages destined for the digital screens, presumably to let "Eurostar is ace"-type content through unedited and block any of those featuring anything along the lines of "Damn, Eurostar delayed again".