28 Feb 2017, 6:02 am
#382
(28 Feb 2017, 1:31 am)omnicity4659 Most of the fleet has advertisements for "visit x" or "navigate to x"... Easy promotion for other services, not onboard features...
As for the X93 timetable, the same amount of effort has gone into designing that, it's just the generic design with a changeable background, whereas other timetables have photos of people (which would change when updated).
What Arriva don't do is plaster crap on the sides of buses, and posters on board saying that free Wifi is available, power sockets etc... I got on an Angel the other day with a poster advertising USB points!
I'm really not sure what all of the big fuss is about - and clearly we're going to go round in round in circles here.
Go North East's market research has proven that existing customers appreciate having features such as free Wi-Fi, Next Stop Announcements, power sockets, etc. It's therefore a great idea to push that many of Go North East's buses have these features - and it's a growing number month on month, year on year. Around half of Go North East's main service fleet (excluding Coaching) now has Wi-Fi - this is a great thing to promote and it shows just how much Go North East is investing in this technology.
If existing customers appreciate it (which Go North East's market research proves that they do), new customers potentially will too. It's potentially something that can get more bums on seats - and that's the aim of the game, isn't it? Most of Go North East's buses are branded, so these buses are only going to be allocated as spares. Clearly Go North East has a strategy here - just as Arriva and Stagecoach do, too.
Arriva's strategy is clearly all about promoting the connections to other services - it only ever seems to be their premium MAX and Sapphire services, from what I have seen. Clearly Arriva wants to promote these brands as well as the services, as these services offer premium features compared to their standard specification. So my previous point still stands. If we are arguing that Go North East is dangling a carrot by the use of these taglines promoting that 'many' of Go North East's buses have these features, then the same should be argued for Arriva with these posters. Arriva's customers would sit on a standard specification bus and would see these posters on the cove panels. They would see the MAX brand, and find that that service has free Wi-Fi, leather seats, while the one they are on has nothing. To suggest that the company
'does not care' about passengers on that service because it isn't branded MAX or Sapphire would be ludicrous, as I'm sure you'll all agree. Just how it's ludicrous to suggest this with Go North East, too.
Regarding the poster you saw on-board the Angel - it did not promote that that bus offered USB charging points. It promoted the fact that 1 in 3 of Go North East's buses have that feature - or something along those lines - similar to these new taglines.
