(24 Aug 2022, 6:01 pm)stagecoachbusdepot wrote More tone deaf marketing amidst the usual sea of "We are sorry but due to [insert excuse] your bus aint coming" tweets, and of course the notification of further decimation of the network with Sept changes.  But good to see there's still time and resource to develop crap like this.

(24 Aug 2022, 5:46 pm)Andreos1 wrote https://www.oscars.org/oscars/voting#:~:text=Nominations%20voting%20is%20conducted%20using,votes%20are%20tabulated%20by%20PricewaterhouseCoopers.

(24 Aug 2022, 6:01 pm)stagecoachbusdepot wrote More tone deaf marketing amidst the usual sea of "We are sorry but due to [insert excuse] your bus aint coming" tweets, and of course the notification of further decimation of the network with Sept changes.  But good to see there's still time and resource to develop crap like this.

(24 Aug 2022, 6:53 pm)streetdeckfan wrote I wonder how much they spent making the ad.

Assuming they outsourced the entire production, I'm guessing probably high 4 figures, if not into the 5 figures

(19 Jul 2022, 11:46 am)Retro Nero wrote Apparently there are some pictures of the new yellow Voltra buses.
Has anyone seen them ?

(24 Aug 2022, 7:35 pm)DeltaMan wrote Why did they not use the Xlines lady? She garnered a combined 85k YouTube views and over 10k views on Twitter from what I recall

Genuinely impressive numbers whatever your views on if they should do these sort of things.

(24 Aug 2022, 7:35 pm)DeltaMan wrote Why did they not use the Xlines lady? She garnered a combined 85k YouTube views and over 10k views on Twitter from what I recall

Genuinely impressive numbers whatever your views on if they should do these sort of things.

(24 Aug 2022, 9:39 pm)Ambassador wrote They aren’t really great numbers at all because you can’t really do anything with them. The product isn’t tangible, you’ve no idea how many of those are agency bought and paid likes, bus enthusiasts or unique views. The removal and degradation of X Lines suggests in fact, it wasn’t relevant. The industry and enthusiasts might have liked it. I can’t see it grew passengers

marketing is fine but this one is fairly empty.

With Quaylink or whatever voltra you’re saying…remember 15 years ago we had electric buses? They were yellow…Well we’ve got them again. So erm, yay for electric.

It’s not growing a route, it’s just switching existing passengers to a newer bus and most won’t care a jot. 

Quaycity is already a decent profile route because of the number of eyes it gets in the city centre, I’m not sure it needed the promotion tbh.

(24 Aug 2022, 10:07 pm)DeltaMan wrote 85,000 "aren't great numbers" 

Christ on a bike. I realise some people are bitter about GNE, but come on... Time to remove the tin foil hats I think

(24 Aug 2022, 10:37 pm)Ambassador wrote And again, the enthusiast mindset kicks in… they genuinely aren’t good numbers, I appreciate you probably don’t work in the marketing space so you may not grasp the point but they simply aren’t.

There are videos on YouTube and Facebook of utter nonsense that are doing that number hourly It means absolutely nothing. 

how many of those 85k watched the full video? How many were directed via algorithm because they like looking at videos of buses? What was the growth on the routes featured? What did research say on the follow ups?

it’s like saying the Red Lion scored 27 goals in the League this Sunday. Without context…meaningless.

(24 Aug 2022, 10:59 pm)DeltaMan wrote "Enthusiast mindset"
I know quite a bit about youtube numbers actually so please don't gate keep.....

It's also "just" a YouTube video, not a 9 part series on Netflix, so in the grand scheme of things doesn't actually matter.....

(24 Aug 2022, 10:07 pm)DeltaMan wrote 85,000 "aren't great numbers" 

Christ on a bike. I realise some people are bitter about GNE, but come on... Time to remove the tin foil hats I think

(24 Aug 2022, 11:12 pm)Adrian wrote No tin foil hat, but I do know a thing or two about building on Social Media.

For a multinational company with a marketing budget, 85k views in a year (across two videos) isn't great at all. Plus a view isn't the same as a unique view, nor is it someone watching the whole video.

In comparison, I've picked a random account with 62k subscribers. An individual with no marketing budget, and he's grabbed 40k views in 8 hours.

Their Facebook video views aren't great either, given they've got nearly 90k followers, but they're not running them as ads. The X-Lines one from August last year has 8.6k views.

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

(24 Aug 2022, 11:11 pm)Storx wrote If you think 85k is good, then you know nothing, no offence.

Clever marketing hides it's marketing bullshit like the 'advert' above.

Here's two examples which Arriva have done by working with someone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xucltut4zGo - 10.5m (million not thousand)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_Brczk8y3I - 11.3m (also million not thousand)

That's clever marketing, no doubt there's been a few kids who have seen that and been excited to see the green Arriva bus and wanted to get on. No-one will look at that advert (note advert not video) and get excited, especially kids.

The Geoff Marshall Voltra video was a clever move though and is similar to these, 154k he got.

(24 Aug 2022, 11:19 pm)ALavery wrote Just proudly wasted 10 minutes of my life thank you

(25 Aug 2022, 12:00 am)stagecoachbusdepot wrote Surely the point isn't whether 85k views is good or bad (personally I'd go with meaningless) the irrefutable proof that these self indulgent vanity project videos don't work is that half of the X-lines routes which that particular video was promoting have been binned off or stripped right back.  In less than a year.  With more to either go or get slashed further. 

It's kind of the same as the endless branding debate.  You can paint a turd and pretend it is posh and desirable but people aren't stupid...if they even pay any attention to what I personally find pretty dull videos, then they see this marketing bullshit compared to the reality of their journeys, and the million "service cancelled" posts that it features amongst, and recognise it as the irrelevant twaddle that it is.  It must come across as GNE towers being in a parallel universe when you are stranded for an hour and see this nonsense pop up.

Does the GNE marketing approach and the likes of these videos fundamentally cause services to fail?  Obviously not.  Do they drive growth, or even sustain a steady state - seems not.  So what do they achieve?  Can't help but think the time that goes into producing this drivel could be better spent by those staff covering even a handful of the missed journeys people endure every day...or the money wasted on developing them (again like the money that gets burned through with the branding agencies and paint suppliers) spent on better pay for the frontline so they dont have a chronic driver shortage - i.e. on stuff that directly impacts passengers every day.  Yet this is where the powers that be at GNE focus their energy.

(01 Sep 2022, 12:49 pm)V514DFT wrote Appears they've been numbered 58**

(01 Sep 2022, 1:20 pm)ne14ne1 wrote Not everyone seems impressed:

https://www.skyscrapercity.com/threads/bus-transport-in-newcastle-and-the-north-east.982512/post-180137893


https://twitter.com/jstantn/status/1565297424012398593?s=21&t=IpYutvd8ZY8-QhycdsChow

(01 Sep 2022, 1:24 pm)Andreos1 wrote I'm just amazed they had the drivers to actually get the buses down to the Quayside!

(01 Sep 2022, 4:04 pm)stagecoachbusdepot wrote Not like they could have found anything more useful for drivers to do, after all there were only over 200 "short notice cancellations" listed for today.  It's all about priorities Andreos!

(01 Sep 2022, 4:18 pm)citaro5284 wrote Drivers were not used, it was some of Gateshead Management and clerical staff......but lets not get the facts get in the way of a good story eh

(01 Sep 2022, 4:24 pm)stagecoachbusdepot wrote If they're capable of driving a bus, driving one in service might have been more useful to the public.

(01 Sep 2022, 4:25 pm)Dan wrote I see we're back to folk on this forum suggesting that they shouldn't market their bus services.

If there's an absence of marketing next week, I guess we'll be back to saying Go North East are shite and need to market their bus services to grow/retain passengers.