NORFOLK, Va. — In the serene, green hills surrounding a white farmhouse in pastoral western Virginia, the wind suddenly picks up, according to the Virginian-Pilot.
A flock of birds takes flight. A barn door swings open. A rooftop weather vane shaped like a galloping horse creaks into a wild spin.
Then, the Norfolk Southern locomotive thunders into view, blowing its whistle. As the train rolls through the field, the weather vane twirls to a stop, with its horse now rearing on hind legs.
“There’s a change in the air,” a narrator says over the images, “and it’s moving us into the future.”
Norfolk Southern Corp. launched this new television commercial this morning — its first TV advertising campaign since late 1999. Giving the train as prominent a role as the company’s longtime black stallion logo, the 30-second spot will air on CNN, CNBC and Fox News. The company began running newspaper ads two months ago.
Norfolk Southern would not disclose how much it is spending on the ad campaign.
The company chose the commotion of the weather to signify the dramatic changes that have taken place since it initiated the new Thoroughbred Operating Plan last summer, explained Rhonda S. Broom, Norfolk Southern’s advertising manager.
Subsequent improvements in delivery times and reliability gave the company a new story to tell potential freight customers and investors.
But there is a political statement within the sales pitch.
With some shipping customers clamoring for renewed regulation of the 20-year deregulated rail industry, Norfolk Southern wanted to appeal to government leaders to leave the business alone.
“It does help people get the message that this is an industry that operates very well as a free enterprise,” Norfolk Southern spokesman Bob Fort said.
Norfolk Southern’s new ads also coincide with a TV, radio and magazine campaign launched by the Association of American Railroads in May. In its spots, the industry trade group touts the value of the railroads to the economy and the environment.
“Chances are the things that show up at your door tomorrow will arrive by train today,” the association’s TV ad says. “And because one train carries the load of up to 500 trucks, that means cleaner air, less fuel, less traffic.”
Railroad advertising makes a subtle impression but does help the underappreciated industry get some needed public recognition, said Anthony B. Hatch, a New York City-based independent rail analyst.
As the general public learns more about the industry, it can influence political opinion. That can benefit the railroads in transportation initiatives, regulatory issues or the allocation of state and federal money for infrastructure improvements, Hatch said.
“If constituents of legislators understood more about the rails, legislators would understand more about the rails,” he said.
Norfolk Southern has done mass advertising since it formed in 1982 with the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway Co. and the Southern Railway Co. Its television spots evolved from computer-generated animation in the late 1980s to the idyllic live-action scene depicted in the latest ad.
Norfolk Southern’s longtime ad agency, J. Walter Thompson in Atlanta, produced the spot. Director Agust Baldursson filmed it over two days at a former sheep farm owned by the Pultz family in Lexington.
Norfolk Southern workers spent a week polishing the train cars, Broom said.
“The thing we’ve never had in our commercials before was the feeling of a real train,” she said. “I like the power and the presence of the real train.”