Baz and Nancy Ashmawy jump on board Dublin Bus

Dublin Bus is launching a new marketing campaign designed to show off the investment and work that goes on behind-the-scenes at its control centre.

The Mad Dash Home campaign, devised by creative agency Rothco, will debut tomorrow with a teaser clip and will be followed next week by an online video in which Baz Ashmawy tries to entice his mother Nancy into a rally car. Nancy, who stars alongside her son in Sky One's 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy, resists and puts her trust in Dublin Bus instead.

A second film, which will be launched on November 12th, will "lay bare the inner workings" of central control in more detail, with Baz and Nancy introduced to the team that helps her beat rally car-driving Baz home. The complexity of what Dublin Bus does in its monitoring of 7,300 bus trips every day "isn't necessarily visible", says head of marketing Dawn Bailey. This campaign seeks to correct that.

And with many commuters now unable to remember a time when Luas works weren’t causing traffic congestion in Dublin city centre, it feels like an opportune moment for a public transport company to remind people of one alternative to private cars.

The campaign highlights that the Dublin Bus real-time passenger information (RTPI) system has a 96 per cent accuracy rate, a statistic that may be surprising for up to 96 per cent of its customers.

The number is "an independent benchmark" decided upon by the National Transport Authority, according to Bailey. It refers to the ultimate accuracy of the information on the RTPI screens – updated every 30 seconds based on GPS and traffic data – rather than bus punctuality per se.

The RTPI system has in itself created a higher level of expectation among customers. “People forget that four years ago, they didn’t know if the bus was coming or if they had missed it,” says Bailey. The control centre can be a high-pressure environment, she adds, with staff responding to everything from road closures and public marches to severe weather conditions and traffic accidents, assessing how they will affect the fleet of 949 busses.

The videos were directed by Brown Bread Films, with the agency Carat holding the Dublin Bus media planning and buying account. The digital campaign is supported by outdoor print ads featuring Dublin Bus staff such as “Barry the Terminator of Traffic”, “Joan the Oracle of Obstacles” and “Angie the Bus Whisperer”.