Arriva: Putuj sa smiješkom

The brief

A campaign for the loyalty programme of the bus company Arriva, made in January 2023 as a second-year project in the course Design in marketing communications. The programme rewards regular passengers with discounts, special offers and points for every kilometre travelled, and the campaign had to make that feel warm rather than administrative.

The approach

The research started from what travellers always have with them: a bag. Photographed straight on against a flat teal background, the opening or clasp of a bag reads as a mouth, so the bags smile without any drawing added. Three bags became three square posters under the line “Putuj sa smiješkom” (Travel with a smile), set in a light rounded sans on Arriva’s teal, and the same visuals run as citylights and as an Instagram series.

The outcome

The ambient part of the campaign takes the idea off the poster. Loyalty members get a roll of eye stickers, kept in a bag-shaped holder at the ticket office, and the stickers turn their own luggage into smiling bags, while a sticker wall in the office invites people to leave a face behind. The whole system is documented in an 18-page project presentation.

Teal poster with a dark brown tote bag seen from above, its small metal clasp reading as a smile, headline Putuj sa smiješkom at the bottom — Poster 3: the tote bag.

Citylight on a shopping street showing the yellow smiling bag poster, with blurred shoppers and shopfronts behind — Citylight mockup.

Hand holding a phone with the Instagram feed open on the Putuj sa smiješkom post with the yellow bag — Instagram post.

Three Instagram feed screens side by side, each with one of the three bag posters as a sponsored post — The three posts as a web campaign.

Roll of self-adhesive stickers printed with cartoon eyes next to a teal bag-shaped pen holder, labelled in Croatian — Ambient advertising: a roll of eye stickers and a bag-shaped holder for the roll.

Teal wall behind an office counter with the headline Putuj sa smiješkom and a cluster of small smiling faces made of eye stickers — The sticker wall in an Arriva ticket office.

Traveller pulling a brown leather trolley suitcase that has a pair of teal cartoon eyes stuck above its front pocket — A suitcase with the eyes stuck on: the bag smiles on its own.