(18 Feb 2018, 11:53 pm)mb134 wrote 7416 went a year and a half without branding or internal refurbishment, and still hasn't been branded for anything! 4664 has been running around in MAX base since late 2016, while the amount of buses with incomplete branding is quite ridiculous.
I fully echo your point about the rear destinations being used for numbers only - Ashington had 7522/3/5-8 running around like that for about half a year without caring. Yes, it is a little thing, but when you've got a bus with so many "little things", it doesn't give off an impression to the customer that you care about the bus, or them.
There is no attention to detail. It seems like the management are still firmly stuck in the mindset where all they had to do was get a bus from A to B - while in 2018, a mindset like that won't see you get very far. You can't try and win passengers by promising everything and delivering nothing, as sooner or later they'll just give up.
7416 won't get branded now, despite the longest opportunity just to apply the generic MAX vinyls. 4664 isn't a MAX bus, but carries what is regarded as the former 'alternative' Arriva livery and is fully unbranded inside with no branding on the headrests to reflect this, but even though, generic Arriva branding could have been applied to this too.
Their marketing techniques make no sense either, a campaign for the Sapphire 6 last year, compared the price difference between a luxury chauffeur driven car and a Sapphire bus, aiming at the wrong market there...I could list all the things wrong with the marketing!
There is also no consistency in the printed publicity either, the switch to folded timetables also brought around a complete redesign of the colourways, of which they used the Best Impressions MAX template, changed it around a bit, and now it just doesn't fit in with the national 'look'.
The X21/X22 timetable looked like it was designed in a nursery, the hideous use of very dark grey, dark blue, purple, Arriva blue and green, along with a logo which doesn't even have "Sapphire" in the correct font... The continued use of old logos, i.e. the 2013 Sapphire logo, the 2017 transitional version, MAX, Frequenta and even the old Arriva logo, just puts on a very poor show in the marketing side of things too.
The news/publicity articles the NE marketing team publish make absolutely no sense whatsoever, whether that be through sentences just being thrown together, spelling errors and just contradictory/wrong information...
Obviously these are very small problems, and there a whole lot more, but to someone like me who has only been researching the best marketing techniques, it's like banging my head off a wall looking at their c**p.