Right on track: How Ray Sono defends its digital budget with Deutsche Bahn

When the digital sector reports on pitches, one often hears about unpaid creative services, classic success stories, or expressions of outrage or joy. Criticism is particularly raised about the fact that the pitch costs are often borne by the agencies and that their valuable input will even be used if they lose the pitch. Which is true.

But what does it mean for a digital agency like Ray Sono – which has a healthy mix of existing B2B and B2C customers – to hold another pitch for Deutsche Bahn after more than a decade of a framework agreement with DB?

To have to prove in an EU-wide call for tenders that the Deutsche Bahn is still on the right track into the digital future with Ray Sono – not just out of habit?

One of the great challenges in such an especially competitive situation is to develop something new and completely unexpected. And to once again delight – and in the end, win over – a trusted partner, after many previous years of an intimate relationship.

One success factor here is certainly the mixed composition of the Ray Sono team, which includes UX experts, designers, strategists, rapid prototypers, customer journey consultants and analysts – but above all with the targeted mix of “old DB team experts” and new people with fresh ideas, as well as people who passionately take trains, and those who just as passionately do not.

Another success factor: to have developed and worked out ideas, visions and solutions all the way to the prototype level, which accompany the Deutsche Bahn in an age when taking the train no longer begins at the counter and ends at the destination. Prototypes in which the central touchpoints of a full-scope customer journey include the provider, a mobility service provider, and smart day-to-day assistants – well before and long after the actual train journey.

After all, the rapidly changing expectations of customers to digital change – coupled with the demand for perfectly functioning digital solutions – no longer allow any partner to cling to a common history without ever shifting course.

This can only be achieved with modern product development that is primarily and consistently customer-oriented – both in the exceptional situation of holding a pitch and then in the subsequent everyday work.

During a summer of new heat records in Germany, the cool Ray Sono basement in the Tumblingerstrasse was the scene where fresh mobility concepts, smart strategies, and user-friendly digital solutions were emerging. These didn’t stop at the limits of DB Services as we know them today. Nicolas Escherich, CEO of Ray Sono AG, formulated the challenge as follows:

Now, as the first snows are falling, Ray Sono won the “monster pitch”, as Horizon titled it. The pitch room is empty, countless sketches and post-its have disappeared from the walls, and the framework agreement has been extended. What remains is a core team of around 15 specialists in Munich and the new Frankfurt office that will accompany Deutsche Bahn into the digital future and continue to put this familiar service to the test again and again.

As if every day involved a bit of pitch.