Source: Amtrak on Instagram
Chugging through the noise
Amtrak’s social team is focused on “stopping the scroll,” Davidson said. The monster truck video—part of Amtrak's broader "Retrain Travel" campaign, which challenges conventional transportation thinking and highlights rail travel benefits—did just that.
"We were really inspired by monster truck commercials and advertisements of the past, seeing how they connected folks of so many different walks of life,” said Naleen Camara, senior social media specialist at Amtrak. “You saw those commercials and you were like, I want to be sitting in there, so we were really trying to find a way to translate that to train travel.”
The team recognized that nostalgia could unify multiple generations—from Gen Z to millennials, and even Gen Alpha—around a familiar, high-energy advertising format that would stand out in the crowded summer travel season.
Steaming ahead to virality
The monster truck video resulted from a deliberate content development process that began approximately two months before posting. "For this post in particular, I'd say we probably started thinking about it back in late April, in time for the summer season," Camara said.
Amtrak's social team follows a structured approach to content ideation, organizing potential posts into three strategic buckets: Business priorities, holidays/seasonality, and general trends. This framework allows them to balance practical information with more creative, attention-grabbing content.
What makes this particular post remarkable is not just its view count but the engagement metrics. While impressions and reach matter, the team identified shares as their "hero metric" for this campaign and saw over 500,000 shares across platforms.
Attracting new riders
The monster truck video succeeded in reaching beyond Amtrak's core audience of dedicated rail enthusiasts, generating over 50,000 new followers across Amtrak's seven social platforms, the company said.
"This new audience, they've heard about Amtrak, but they're not always taking it," Camara said. "We're really talking to folks who have never really considered it first, and now they're reaching out to us."
This focus on expanding its audience aligns with Amtrak's broader business objectives: "We are on the road to becoming a hospitality powerhouse, and we really want to reimagine the whole train experience,” Davidson said. “Content like this gets people to recognize there is a better way to travel."
Following your own track
Brands often overlook the need for boldness on social media. "Especially in the social space, it's okay to stand out, and it's okay to express yourself and celebrate that bold, creative vibe," Davidson said
Amtrak's willingness to pivot quickly when content isn't performing well has also been crucial to its success Camara said. The team actively monitors comments not just for sentiment but as a "suggestion box" that informs future content decisions.
The team cautioned against blindly jumping on every trend. "It's really about picking and choosing which ones you think are really going to get you to your desired outcome," Camara explained.
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