(16 Feb 2015, 9:43 am)Robert wrote The point i am trying to adopt is that although branding works 99.8% of the time, there is always that 0.2% when it doesn't. People at Ashington and Blyth probably don't allocate buses as badly as they do on purpse and when MAX and Sapphire buses (using this example again) cross, they can't switch them over meaning they have to stay on the services all day. 
I understand that people are able to tell the difference beween a double decker, single decker and a minibus. More people care about the features on the bus than the bus type itself so if a Fab56 B9 had to appear on service 60 (example - i am aware of the low bridge between Seaham and Parkside), they wouldn't care that much because it has free wifi anyway. In your Slimplicity example, did they just see a purple bus immediately assume that it was the bus they were waiting for did they recognise the vehicle type (and the purple)? If it is just the purple, would it have happened if a plain purple solar had came along (or even a branded one for that fact - from a distance you won't be able to clearly see the branding)? It just shows that eventhough a us is branded for a particular route, you still need to check the destination display rather than seeing a bus that you normally get and assume its the service you're waiting for. I very much support branding but i sometimes feel that customers sometimes rely on the system too much and don't bother to take that 2 second look up at the destination display. As i said at the very start of this post, branding can't work 100% of the time.