Let's be fair, First, Stagecoach and Arriva have all deleted longstanding brands and replaced them with something much more bland and sterile. People are increasingly reacting against 'clone Britain' and its not surprising these young brands are suffering. TfL on the other hand has a long and rich brand heritage to use; when I first moved to London in 2005 after several years of shuttling between Dundee and Durham, I was struck by how retro the tube station branding looked, and how something that looked very 1950s was applied to new builds such as the Jubilee line extension.JamieLei wrote:Very interesting. Although I hope that if that were to happen, the marketing expertise gained from privatisation won't be lost. Public sector agencies are notoriously crap at marketing.
Lothian is a municipal company and pretty much makes the point; the old orthodox of state=anti-commercialism/stalinism/brutalism is falling away. We're increasingly seeing a new type of social marketing and this was historically reflected in municipal transport undertakings which were generally run for profit as much as for social welfare. These undertakings have a big stake in improving their locality and justifying their existence to their political masters and are more likely to take marketing seriously. I'd argue its a very different ethos from the old 'demand management' model that firms like British Rail and the NBC had. I can see quite a bright marketing future for public transport in municipal hands.
