Germany is gripped by football fever as the World Cup takes place from 9 June to 9 July. One million visitors from all over the world are expected to arrive in North Rhine-Westphalia alone during the World Cup month, which poses major challenges for the local public transport companies. A large-scale multilingual service and communication campaign has been designed to show that North Rhine-Westphalia's public transport system is ready for this major international event and provide information about the numerous additional special offers for passengers. The Cologne-based agency group, MEDIA CONSULTA (MC), and its specialist agencies MC Advertising, MC Germany and MC Sport & Entertainment, won the pitch to design and implement an integrated information and communication campaign with a budget of one million euros.

The campaign will kick off with a 'rolling press conference' in a genuine campaign-branded World Cup train. Billboards, posters and advertising space in and on buses and trains throughout North Rhine-Westphalia will be used to promote the campaign from early June onwards. The colourful motifs convey multicultural enthusiasm and a passion for football - moods that will hopefully rub off on the public transport passengers.

The campaign logo was designed by MC and it unites the theme worlds of football and public transport under the slogan of "Want to go to the World Cup? We'll take you there!". The aim is to tell World Cup visitors in a brief, to-the-point and memorable way that there are special offers for bus and train passengers in North Rhine-Westphalia during the World Cup. For example, there will be extended night services, special tickets and Welcome Counters at all important terminals.

Public transport operators will face the challenges of the greater overall level of mobility and very spontaneous, match-oriented travel behaviour of passengers during the World Cup weeks. One particular challenge is the diverse languages that the passengers speak. All information material produced by MC, plus the website, are available in all four official FIFA languages. "The international orientation and integrated campaign expertise of MC and its specialist agencies in all fields of communication make it ideally equipped to implement the multicultural, multilingual and cross-media campaign that is necessitated by the World Cup in Germany," said MC's CEO Harald Zulauf.

The information and communication campaign is part of a state-wide public transport concept that has received a five million euro subsidy from the North Rhine-Westphalian government. It is being coordinated by Verkehrsbund Rhein-Ruhr, the biggest public transport association in Europe.