The Brief

LNER wanted to create a moment that they could share with The Voice UK to introduce their brand mascot, Eleanor in a way that’s never been done before. Using her signature ‘Freedom’ vocal to light up the stage, and let everyone watching know that ‘Freedom All the Way’ is the LNER way.

The challenge was to create a partnership that:

• Encapsulates the sense of freedom that comes from travelling with LNER
• Seamlessly integrated the two brand worlds
• Provided the performance and brand messaging needed to maintain each brand’s value

The Creative Idea

The campaign has Eleanor at the center, bringing the charisma and energy needed to bring this to life.

This was a completely new approach, as this project was created with AI-video generation, using real source material in the form of images, footage supplied by LNER and The Voice UK to build an accurate visual landscape. This required detailed prompting and multiple creative amends to ensure that the AI software had the needed creative direction guiding its generative outcomes.

The aim was to create a campaign that looked like it was shot in real-time, showcasing the many possibilities of what it’s like to dream big whilst travelling with LNER. Another ask was to show the various destinations that LNER travels across the UK, creating bespoke versions targeting the regions across LNER’s key routes, using regional VO’s that are contextual to the destination. Destinations included:

Newcastle to London, London to Leeds, Leeds to London, and Edinburgh to London.

These regional spots lived across ITVX and YouTube. Including more of the brand messaging within these spots as the LNER brand ad does not play out after.

My Role

As the Creative Lead on this project:

• Developed the creative direction and visual direction from pitching all the way through to delivery by writing the scripts and designing the storyboards into a treatment
• Worked closely with producers and AI-Creative to accurately build each scene of the campaign
• Directed all of the voiceover artists for all creative assets to maintain consistency, energy and tonality

Impact

• Commercial Account Growth (£20K → £90K): Ideated and pitched a high-concept, AI-powered partnership vision to LNER stakeholders, securing client buy-in and a +350% incremental budget uplift, scaling from a £20K test into a £90K headline campaign.
• AI Creative Direction & Supervision: Acted as the visual and conceptual anchor, directing an AI creative through iterative generation, style-matching, prompt refining, and compositing to ensure all assets met broadcast-tier standards.
• Full-Lifecycle Ownership: Led the project from initial pitch deck and creative strategy through stakeholder management, workflow design, and final delivery across The Voice UK ecosystem.
• Pioneering Production Workflows: Proved that creative direction of specialised AI talent can deliver premium visual fidelity without the overhead of massive traditional shoots.

Learnings for Next Time

Lock Scripts & Storyboards Before Production: With AI generation, every shot took around a day to get right, and prompts became more complex as each round of feedback was layered in. Changes mid-production are far more expensive than on a traditional shoot, so next time I’d have the scripts and storyboards fully signed off by all stakeholders before a single frame is generated, giving the AI process a fixed blueprint rather than a moving target.

Build In an Upfront Onboarding Week: Setting up models and testing elements takes real time. I’d include an extra week at the front end purely for testing, so issues like Eleanor appearing too human in early generations are solved internally, before they ever reach a client feedback round.

Get Hands-On With the Real Asset: Reference was the single biggest factor in quality. Scenes built without strong reference took longer and were harder to land, while the reference videos we did have were crucial. Next time I’d secure the physical Eleanor puppet early to shoot our own bespoke reference photography and feed it straight into the AI, rather than relying on existing material.

The biggest takeaway: AI doesn’t replace production craft, it rewards it. Treating the process like a real film shoot, with the collective experience of the team guiding every shot, was what made it work.