(10 Jan 2015, 4:54 pm)MrPottski wrote I don't see what use branding achieves. Outside of the Sapphire and max, most customers don't really care what colour it is, they look at the destination to see if it's the right one. Plus arriva don't tend to stick to correct brand allocation anyway, and then it only gets us lot in a flap when, say, a Sapphire ends up on the X66 or similar. Surely to god, all companies should just go for a clean, well maintained, well presented fleet and cut out the gimmicks. Don't get me wrong, I think Sapphire has worked, especially on the 7, but when you start ending up with a fleet that resembles Josephs Technicolour Dreamboats (I'm looking at you GNE!) then it's just daft. I genuinely don't think Max will attract any more people in Darlington, bit we'll have to wait and see.

I think branding was introduced to help people distinguish one route from another.

For example, if I was a poor-sighted pensioner at Gateshead Interchange, and I was used to seeing a red, blue and yellow bus on the 21, like on all routes - I would be able to see a bright pink bus coming from a distance, rather than have to check the destination when it got close.