(30 Mar 2022, 9:05 pm)DaveFromUpNorth wrote Keep the branding as it is useful

Many people and elderly with disabilities  may not be able to read but recognise say a Quaylink bus they will associate that as the Yellow Bus

Or

Say Prince Bishops as the Purple Bus

It's like word association but brand association

Think the Cobalt route you want the silver and blue Bus

Yeah 95pc of buses are on branded  routes but it does promote routes in other ways too

Who remembers seeing branded 685 branded service it can spark a debate to make a day out for people

Branding is useful

Think about if you see the Beamish advert Bus the association thinking I can get the bus to Beamish  its a good thing branded buses as its self advertisement

You could be like Stagecoach who don't branded the buses ish

Look at X24 and X34 providing a visual advertisement when they were branded buses

You forget its enthuiasts on this page to the Joe public a bus is a bus and that is why branding and marketing is essential

If you work in Cobalt or Silverlink and see the branded bus going past you notice it and recognise it in other places and the colours associate where you have seen it so when in Cobalt people see the bus and read the side to associate where it goes

I say keep the branding and continue with it

Is there actually any evidence to back up the claims here?  Stagecoach branded several buses for the 22 promoting the Cobalt links which (apart from 19385 which seems allergic to the paintshop and retains the branding) was retained for hardly any time.  Similarly the route branding for X24 and X34 have been phased out so presumably Stagecoach didn’t see a positive impact from these.

In terms of people being unable to read but recognising the colour of the bus – somewhat dangerous if you think purple bus means Prince Bishops and you end up in Seaham (for example).  Even without incorrect allocations, in the majority of cases, the notion that they have built up a brand identity based on colour is pretty baseless.  Take the 4 as an example, in the last ten years it (or predecessor routes) have been yellow, metallic blue and now sickly mix of bright pink with blue.  Toonlink went from yellow to purple to black.   Yes there are some that have retained a consistent-ish colour but even the likes of Angel and Drifter which have been around ages started off different colours to now.  Then of course there is also the sharing of brands across multiple services or the moving of brands around to suit vehicle allocations – lost track of how many services got dumped with Showstopper brand.  Toonlink is another that jumped around, again making jumping on the purple/black bus and assuming you were on the right route something of a leap of faith.

It would be genuinely interesting to know (and suspect we never will unless working for one of the big companies) whether branding is actually cost effective when taking into account multiple repaints which can occur as a result (there’s an example elsewhere of one of the Streetdecks being onto its 4th repaint already; the former X5/X15s being another example of branding directly resulting in occurring additional costs when plans change).