Rail Futures are a specialist technical consultancy that supports colleges and training providers in delivering high-quality engineering training within the rail industry. They approached Red-Fern with a mammoth task on their hands - they wanted to completely rebrand a section of their current business and branch it off into its own standalone business. 

Upon realisation of the size of the project, we were incredibly excited. Of course, we get excited whenever a new partner joins, however, a huge project that allows us to get ultra-creative and strategic, we’re all over it. From logos and branding, innovative website design and ongoing marketing, Rail Futures needed THE LOT. 

Rail Futures are dedicated to developing the rail industry and the future of the workforce on the rail too. Roles within the rail industry are often overlooked - usually because they’re unknown and unheard of. So, they wanted to uncover the key opportunities with the industry and attract as many people to train to work on the rail as possible. 

When approaching us, Rail Futures were at a little bit of a crossroads. Their current system and processes were working, however, they weren't as streamlined and efficient as possible. That was up to us to solve with innovative solutions, advanced technology, strategic marketing and other efforts.

All partnerships at Red-Fern are kicked off with our thorough Discovery phase. With Rail Futures, the main Discovery workshop was held at our offices and was one of our biggest sessions to date. Various key project stakeholders from both parties were in attendance, that way, we were sure to cover all bases and requirements. 

During the Discovery phase, we presented various strategic branding concepts with innovative logos and trademarks. Using our research from this phase, we created a variety of branding and logo concepts so that our partners had plenty to choose from. It’s safe to say that they were blown away by the concepts and loved the face of their new brand. 

As always, we got to know the business, the wider industry, the competition and any extra information that would stand the project in good stead. As a result of these sessions, we can then set about prototyping and wireframing the new site, plus, strategising all marketing efforts so that they are on track to achieve the overall project goals and objectives. 

At Rail Futures, there’s a large team that we work closely with. Due to the number of people that we liaise with on their side, we need to ensure that communication levels are always high. That way, everybody knows what’s going on and we’re all pulling in the same direction. Communication is a massive priority for both parties within our partnership. 

Our working relationship with Rail Futures is incredible - something that we’re very proud of with all of our clients. As we’ve said, we can put a lot of this down to thorough communication at every stage of the project. Expectations are always well managed and any questions, queries or worries are always answered and alleviated by our team of experts.

Once we’d carried out the Discovery sessions and internally agreed on an approach, we started to put together a collection of logos and branding concepts. Of course, this was in effect a new business, so naturally, we needed to give it a clear identity before starting anything else. Otherwise, we’d run the risk of blending in with the competition and not reaching true potential. 

Our concepts were all incredibly well researched and put together and Rail Futures were blown away with the effort. All concepts utilised clever rail industry connections, instantly recognisable factors and bold colouring - this made the branding and logos pop, which is incredibly necessary to catch the eye and grab attention. 

After all branding was agreed upon, we designed, prototyped and built a fully bespoke, innovative site. The new site allowed users to freely navigate around the site without any trouble, that way, they could easily find out the information that they needed about upcoming courses. With such a large audience, designing a site that suits the needs of the masses was a real challenge - however, very rewarding when signed off. 

Once the site was signed off and launched, we’ve continued to work alongside them in a marketing retainer. The multi-faceted approach is key to attracting new learners to the site and signing up for Open Days to progress their future. We’ve used a variety of approaches including content marketing, social media marketing, video marketing and paid marketing. 

We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved with Rail Futures - the key figures and metrics since launching the site are utterly incredible. That’s a credit to our ever-changing approach - when targeting a mass audience, you have to keep things fresh for different audiences on each platform. 

We’re very proud of the results that we’ve achieved and our overall partnership with Rail Futures.