The Czech Railways and CEZ: The Rainbow Locomotive is departing - the first promotion train engine in the Central and Eastern Europe

CEZ Power Company became the first company in the Central and Eastern Europe to promote its product by means of a publicity train engine of the Czech Railways (CeskĂ© drahy). Our railroads will see a Rainbow Locomotive", which will be promoting the Rainbow Electricity generated by CEZ. This is a unique advertising project, not only within the Czech Republic. Only for this particular purpose, the Czech Railways, through their daughter company RailReklam, provided us with their fastest electric locomotive of the 151.001 series, which is capable of reaching the speed of 160 km/h.

The new Rainbow Locomotive" is a part of a long-term publicity campaign that CEZ, launched at the end of the last year in connection with the newly opened electricity market. The promotion campaign is aimed at presenting the new CEZ commercial programme. The campaign is promoting the commercial trademark Rainbow Electricity", with the aim of making the public aware of the newly introduced trademark and making it interesting for potential customers. In addition to this, the campaign also aims to make the general public aware, in an interesting and distinctive way, that the market with electricity in the Czech Republic is being opened, and that all customers are entitled to choose their own suppliers of electricity.

The purpose of the campaign is to gradually start preparing the consumers for this possibility, and to make them acquainted with the potential benefits and disadvantages which the newly opened market might entail for them. Another important task is to start presenting electricity as a range of goods, which can be purchased, and from which the customer may even choose, judging according to individual characteristics, i.e. he/she does not have to buy it from an appointed distributor, as has been the standard practice until now. The campaign also strives to elucidate that CEZ is as yet unable to sell its electricity directly to most of the end customers, and is therefore not responsible for the increased cost of electricity. Quite the opposite, CEZ even reduced the cost of electricity for this year and consequently finds it appropriate to make people aware of this fact, by means of the enlightening? promotion campaign.

A space for advertising on railway carriages is as yet offered only by several railway companies in Europe, namely in Switzerland, Germany and to a smaller extent also in the Netherlands and Italy, some individual cases were also to be seen in Austria, (e.g. the back-up for the launch of Euro) and in Norway (the Winter Olympics). The Czech Railways have thus ranked themselves among progressive railway providers that use alternative ways of generating funds for their own operations.

The business entity which has exclusive right to job the advertising space on both movable and immovable property of the Czech Railways is its daughter company RailReklam, and this project offers long expected unique outdoor spaces for advertising in the Czech market. The colourful train has thus become a non-traditional and unique medium that the RailReklam company offers in cooperation with the Czech Railways.

The creative draft and the graphic design of the first advertising locomotive in the Czech Republic was made by the Young & Rubicam agency and the graphic and production studio Milfait MSW, which covered the painting of the trains. The painting process was rather specific, because it had to take into consideration the division of the chassis of the train engine, the operation conditions and the regulations of the Czech railways. The process spraying of the comparatively complex motive consisting of lightnings and colourful interfaces was done by the studios Milfait MSW and H&H, by means of the airbrush method (American colour retouching), based on the principle of precise application and spraying of paint. The entire paint layer on the advertisement is protected against damage by means of anti-graffiti varnish.

Ladislav Kriz Petr Stahlavsky

CEZ Press Officer Czech Railways Press Officer

10. 6. 2002