The new meaning of value

If you’ve felt the ground shift­ing under what ​“val­ue” means late­ly, you’re not imag­in­ing it. McKinsey’s lat­est State of the Con­sumer 2025 report cap­tures the moment per­fect­ly: 85% of peo­ple say the cost of liv­ing has changed how they shop, but they’re not sim­ply cut­ting back. They’re re-pri­ori­tis­ing. Trad­ing down in some places so they can splurge in others.

That might look con­tra­dic­to­ry on paper, but emo­tion­al­ly, it makes sense. Peo­ple aren’t just chas­ing sav­ings any­more, they’re chas­ing feel­ing. A sense of fair­ness, reward, and small joy that jus­ti­fies the spend. They’ll skip the every­day lat­te to afford a meal that feels spe­cial, or swap a big brand for a small­er one that feels more them.

Val­ue isn’t a price war; it’s an emo­tion war. The brands win­ning now aren’t those shout­ing ​“cheap­er!” but those that make peo­ple feel clever, cared for, and good about their choice. When val­ue feels good, it stops being a com­pro­mise and starts being a connection.

Turn­ing emp­ty seats into emo­tion­al val­ue
The shift in what peo­ple call ​“val­ue” sits right at the heart of Super­fare. When bud­gets feel tighter, trav­ellers aren’t sim­ply hunt­ing for the low­est num­ber on a price board, they’re look­ing for some­thing that feels fair, human and a bit uplift­ing. A lit­tle win that makes the spend make sense.

That’s exact­ly the ten­sion we found with Avan­ti West Coast. Every year, 12 mil­lion coach trav­ellers were choos­ing slow jour­neys not out of pref­er­ence, but because the price of rail just didn’t feel right. At the same time, Avanti’s trains were leav­ing with emp­ty seats. A clas­sic mis­match between cost, emo­tion and expe­ri­ence, and a per­fect open­ing to rede­fine what val­ue could feel like on the rails.

Our Approach

1. See val­ue as emo­tion­al, not transactional
The brief wasn’t to ​“make it cheap­er”. It was to grow Avanti’s reach with­out strip­ping away the pre­mi­um feel. We framed the chal­lenge as cre­at­ing val­ue that didn’t feel like com­pro­mise. It was val­ue that felt con­sid­ered, clever and good to choose.

2. Turn frus­tra­tion into clarity
Rail fares are famous­ly baf­fling. Instead of ignor­ing that, we treat­ed it as the emo­tion­al lever. If Super­fare could remove con­fu­sion, it could cre­ate an instant sense of fair­ness, and the kind of lift peo­ple are craving.

3. Cre­ate an offer that says how it feels
Super­fare was born from that emo­tion­al gap. A name that promised exact­ly what peo­ple were miss­ing: sim­plic­i­ty, trans­paren­cy and gen­uine fair­ness. Not just cheap­er tick­ets but a smarter, more human way to book. It car­ried Avanti’s feel-good ener­gy, refram­ing the brand as not just fast, but thoughtful.

4. Bring val­ue to life visually
We dialled up Avanti’s warmth. Brighter colours, friend­ly copy, relaxed con­fi­dence. A visu­al lan­guage that didn’t whis­per ​“dis­count”, it sig­nalled ​“you’ve found a good thing.”

5. Start with stu­dents — the val­ue pioneers
They were bud­get-savvy, fed up with fare con­fu­sion and primed for some­thing that felt fair­er. Super­fare gave them clar­i­ty, agency and a rea­son to feel good about choos­ing rail over coach.

The Results
Launched in Jan­u­ary 2023, Super­fare quick­ly expand­ed from four to twen­ty-four routes by April, sup­port­ed by sea­son­al, mul­ti-chan­nel campaigns.

18 mil­lion impressions

40,000+ book­ings

£700k+ in new revenue

70% of cus­tomers were new to Avan­ti, and 50% were new to rail alto­geth­er. Sat­is­fac­tion soared, 88% said they’d book again, 85% rat­ed the expe­ri­ence high­ly, and the cam­paign won ​‘Deliv­er­ing for the Cus­tomer’ at the Spot­light Rail Awards 2024.

Oth­er oper­a­tors soon fol­lowed suit. It was proof that when you build val­ue around expe­ri­ence, not dis­count­ing, growth follows.

Super­fare didn’t just sell tick­ets. It turned fair­ness into a feel­ing, and feel­ing into performance.

Val­ue with­out com­pro­mise
Super­fare isn’t real­ly a tick­et prod­uct, it’s a trust prod­uct. It shows that when peo­ple feel seen, treat­ed fair­ly and giv­en gen­uine choice, they don’t just buy more, they buy in. Today, val­ue is about emo­tion­al lift: fair­ness, reward, the tiny spark that says ​“this was worth it.” Brands that win aren’t the cheap­est; they’re the clear­est, the fairest, the ones that turn val­ue into a feel­ing. Super­fare did exact­ly that. It turned emp­ty seats into oppor­tu­ni­ty and oppor­tu­ni­ty into emo­tion­al value.