Ideas for a brand for a single English railway system?

[Bletchleyite]

From https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...ontrol-of-railways.205793/page-4#post-4652872

That has to be important because on of the larger elephants in the room is the likely semi permanent and probably very significant drop in passenger numbers. There will be a need for marketing and advertising to win them back.

How is the new version of the railway going to sell itself ?

Dare I suggest giving a certain Mr Stenning possibly the largest contract he's ever had to brand and market the lot?

Or perhaps whoever did LNER? "This is our InterCity"? You could actually do it with the same brand - the slant would go through the "pointy N" of InterCity instead of LNER, everything else including the livery (and the Azuma brand on 80x) would work as is.

Edit: note, I'm assuming ScotRail and TfW branding is likely to stay, so we would be talking about a unified English operation with some "international" services into Scotland/Wales as per the present TOCs.

Edit edit: you could have sub-brands, e.g. have West Coast, East Coast, Great Western, Greater Anglia, TransPennine etc under your InterCity heading as well as the same under whatever you use for your regional and local services, a bit like Regional Railways did. To be fair, Regional would probably do as a brand, again with subscripts like Northern (Express) etc, maybe even NSE style sector logos by the door.

 

[Domh245]

Or perhaps whoever did LNER? "This is our InterCity"? You could actually do it with the same brand - the slant would go through the "pointy N" of InterCity instead of LNER, everything else including the livery (and the Azuma brand on 80x) would work as is.

That would be the same branding consultancy who were recently paid £27k to capitalise the word 'northern'! In addition to OLR, they've also worked with DfT, FCC, SWT and TPE

(tongue in cheek, obviously there's more to it than just that!)

 

[Bletchleyite]

FWIW I couldn't possibly be more convinced that "InterCity" should make a comeback. It's probably the strongest transport brand in the world, we invented it and others copied, and people have a strong affinity to it. It also doesn't carry the negative connotations BR might in the same way (even though it was sometimes known as "InterSh***y" in the latter days by some).

I'd not go back to the 1990s swallow branding, though, I'd do something new (or re-use the LNER scheme which would fit it well).

 

[Dr Day]

Much of the branding was to support competition between operators which in a non-revenue risk taking world is no longer required in the same way, although there will still be a need for some form of yield/capacity management.

There will presumably still be competition for ticket sales commission including third parties like Trainline needing to maintain a brand in the market, but possibly against stiffer competition from a nationally recognised official single 'National Rail' type outlet.

I'm personally against the concept of 'English' featuring anywhere - there are just too many 'English' operators providing services to, from and within Wales and TfW are a key provider of services within England. Slightly different with Scotland, but the rail network is still a GB-wide network.

I see no reason why we can't have regional and maybe InterCity operators or pseudo-operators with appropriate branding on their trains so people find it a bit easier to know which one to get on ("Is this the London train?"), but a national brand for ticketing, timetable/fares information, and stations. Don't see what is wrong with a more widespread use of National Rail to be honest. Either way, the emphasis needs to be on getting more passenger miles using 'the train' (plus buses and active travel) over 'the car', rather than Operator A over Operator B.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Much of the branding was to support competition between operators which in a non-revenue risk taking world is no longer required in the same way,
although there will still be a need for some form of yield/capacity management.

I think I'd separate "competition" from "price differentiation". Other than between MKC and London, for instance, LNR don't really compete with Avanti, they provide different services for different budgets. You could look at it between Brum and London as LNR is attracting people out of coaches and Ford Fiestas, while Avanti is attracting people out of BMWs and Mercs. There will be a bit of an overlap but not a massive one. Similarly, with regard to the through Liverpool services, LNR's 5 hour journey vs Avanti's 2 and a bit just aren't aiming at the same people. Actually having that sort of price differentiation for a flexible product (or an Advance one) is going to compete with the car far better than just having one set of prices but if you want to go cheap you have to give up flexibility.

There is no reason why you couldn't have differentiated pricing of that kind within a single brand or even operator - DB, for instance, does (with the Quer Durchs Land ticket and things like the Hamburg-Berlin IRE if that's still running, and IC vs ICE though that's sort of blurring now), as does SNCF though in a different way with the likes of Ouigo. You'd just have a "Regional only" ticket at a lower price, or perhaps "route Northampton/High Wycombe" or something.

 

[Dr Day]

There is no reason why you couldn't have differentiated pricing of that kind within a single brand or even operator

That's what I meant by still needing some form of yield/capacity management - ie differentiated fares to segment the market and spread demand.

 

[Belperpete]

While the "InterCity" branding was very good, there were two big problems with it:
1) it included services that weren't really inter-city, and so diluted the branding
2) "InterCity" was palpably the premium brand, and other routes such as cross-country and local services were very much seen as the poor relation when it came to spending decisions. In much the same way as the main problem with grammar schools was that the other secondary schools were very much treated as the poor relations.

Much of the current mainline train operations serve a hybrid purpose, with the same trains catering for both long-distance and local passengers at the same time. For example, West Coast through services catering for commuters between places like Rugby, Coventry and Birmingham. At Birmingham, the "London train" is also the local train to Coventry. Branding them as "InterCity" would suggest they aren't that bothered about their local-service role.

While the rail-network is indeed GB-wide, I can't see either the Scottish or Welsh governments agreeing to hand-over their hard-won control of their bits of it. And quite rightly, they have achieved more than Westminster has. So we are talking here about an English operator, albeit with some services that go onto Scotland and Wales, in the same way as some ScotRail and TfW services carry on into England (and some DB services go onto places outside Germany, etc etc). "Transport for England" seems the obvious if uninspired branding. EnglandRail doesn't trip off the tongue in the same way as ScotRail.

Or bring back the GW, LMS, LNE and SR. Or is that too radical?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Much of the current mainline train operations serve a hybrid purpose, with the same trains catering for both long-distance and local passengers at the same time. For example, West Coast through services catering for commuters between places like Rugby, Coventry and Birmingham. At Birmingham, the "London train" is also the local train to Coventry. Branding them as "InterCity" would suggest they aren't that bothered about their local-service role.

As indeed they shouldn't be. Britain has a cack-handed crossover between IC and regional in order to sustain the excessive frequency of mostly[1] short trains that seem to be the preference. While we probably can't get rid of that entirely, it is not the priority of Avanti to serve the Birmingham-Coventry market and nor should it ever be. It's a convenient thing on the side, that's all, so there is no reason to incorporate it in any branding[3].

In any case, last time I checked, Birmingham and Coventry were both cities, so it's not like it's *inaccurate* [2]

[1] I know 11-car Pendolinos are not "short", but you know what I mean.
[2] I'm waiting for someone to propose InterCity branding for the District Line, connecting as it does the Cities of Westminster and London
[3] Other than it might be sensible, as DB does, to put "West Midlands Railway tickets valid to Coventry" or something like that on the PIS so everyone knows they can use it.

 

[Non Multi]

Until last year, our railways had a world renowned 'super brand' which almost always delivered a great marketing message; even if you may have personally disliked the figurehead of the brand. Their ads and PR stunts got people on trains again, and not just TOCs that had that brand name, such was their 'halo effect'.

Creating a superbrand is a very costly exercise that isn't guaranteed to work.

Ask a youngster about InterCity and they'll not have a clue what you're on about.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Ask a youngster about InterCity and they'll not have a clue what you're on about.

They might not, but everyone aged over about 35 will know what it was, which is a huge proportion of the population, and if you said "inter-city train" to a 20 year old they would still know what you meant, i.e. something like this:

Model of an 80x in GWR livery

And not something like this:

Class 323 in LM livery at New St

 

[MarkyT]

I like InterCity, but if its used at all I'd rather see it as a sub-branding to a regional identity. Example - A GWR InterCity service operated by First or whoever. That accommodates the necessity that once these get past Taunton they are providing the backbone of the local regional peninsula service as well as their long-distance London role.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I like InterCity, but if its used at all I'd rather see it as a sub-branding to a regional identity. Example - A GWR InterCity service operated by First or whoever. That accommodates the necessity that once these get past Taunton they are providing the backbone of the local regional peninsula service as well as their long-distance London role.

You're the second person to say that, but I really don't think anyone cares - people used InterCity trains for local journeys in BR days, and I genuinely don't think they care that much what colour it's painted. Not to mention non-geographical brands like Virgin Trains (or now Avanti) who operate a considerable proportion of the local service on the WCML north of Crewe.

 

[Belperpete]

As indeed they shouldn't be. Britain has a cack-handed crossover between IC and regional in order to sustain the excessive frequency of mostly[1] short trains that seem to be the preference. While we probably can't get rid of that entirely, it is not the priority of Avanti to serve the Birmingham-Coventry market and nor should it ever be. It's a convenient thing on the side, that's all, so there is no reason to incorporate it in any branding[3].

Agreed, but if the stops at places like Rugby, Milton Keynes, etc. were removed, so that the trains were genuinely Inter-City, then a lot of people might object.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Agreed, but if the stops at places like Rugby, Milton Keynes, etc. were removed, so that the trains were genuinely Inter-City, then a lot of people might object.

Rugby is far enough out that its main service to London being IC is probably not that improbable a thing even if it's technically a town. "City" in the context doesn't need to refer to actual city status, but just relatively important urban areas.

MKC-Euston by Avanti is an incidental flow, with only 3tph against LNR's 4 plus peak extras, and with them all inconveniently crammed together in a 15ish minute period in the hour, which is not the wrong thing to do as it serves the primary purpose for them best. The primary purpose of Avanti trains stopping at MKC is for people using them to make inter-city journeys (OK, it's a "new city") between MKC and the Midlands/North.

The general understanding of "InterCity train" is "a fast train connecting significant places and primarily providing for medium-long distance passengers". There's no need to get too finiticky about what constitutes a city, nor to kick the incidental local passengers off (unless they cause a specific problem, e.g. overcrowding on XC), nor to start slapping the swallow on the Birmingham-Coventry stopping EMU just because it happens to run between two settlements that have city status.

 

[MarkyT]

I really don't understand this 'genuine intercity' term. Trains stop where they do because there's a demand and it makes commercial sense. When an ostensibly 'intercity' train makes a comparatively rural or small town call its usually becausee that place is a major junction or a railhead (in modern terms a parkway) serving a wide affluent area that can have a viable demand to major cities also served en route. As long as only a moderate number of such intermediate calls are made, modern traction allows such stops without the huge time penalties of the steam age or their gutless early diesel replacements. Of course some stations are missed on a few headline trains even now and that can be very annoying in one of those towns when your nice regular repeating service is interrupted in one or two random hours just so some marketing guy can get a round number of minutes on a poster which probably makes no difference whatsoever to ticket sales and makes timetable planners' jobs just that little bit harder.

 

[43096]

They might not, but everyone aged over about 35 will know what it was, which is a huge proportion of the population, and if you said "inter-city train" to a 20 year old they would still know what you meant

I'm getting the impression on here that there's quite a few people don't understand what InterCity was about judging by the comments about trains stopping at plavces such as Milton Keynes, Rugby and Coventry. They did that back in the days of BR InterCity - IC was always the fast service on the Coventry-Brum Intl-Brum Cesspit-Wolverhampton with roughly 2 or 3 trains per hour on that route (West Coast and CrossCountry sub-sectors).

If we look at IC (and indeed ICE) services in Germany they may call at multiple stations in a metropolitan area e.g. Hamburg Altona, Hamburg Hbf, Hamburg Harburg, Berlin Hbf, Berlin Südkreuz etc and stations that are not necessarily in a city.

 

[HSTEd]

Can't we just brand as "Railway" or something?
Like the most generic inoffensive brand possible that means nothing.

 

[Energy]

I'm thinking Network England (or Network Rail) then the regions would be:
-Network North (Northern England)
-Network West (Great Western)
-Network Midlands (East Midlands and LNWR)
-Network East (Greater Anglia, C2C and maybe Southeastern)
-Network South (GTR, SWR and maybe Southeastern)

Maybe not network as it could get confused with Network Rail although that could be fine if Grant Shapps goes ahead with NR awarding the contracts.

Similar sub brands for intercity services like Express West and Express East although I'm struggling to come up with separate names for Great Western and West coast as both are west.

 

[Belperpete]

I'm thinking Network England (or Network Rail) then the regions would be:
-Network North (Northern England)
-Network West (Great Western)
-Network Midlands (East Midlands and LNWR)
-Network East (Greater Anglia, C2C and maybe Southeastern)
-Network South (GTR, SWR and maybe Southeastern)

Maybe not network as it could get confused with Network Rail although that could be fine if Grant Shapps goes ahead with NR awarding the contracts.

Similar sub brands for intercity services like Express West and Express East although I'm struggling to come up with separate names for Great Western and West coast as both are west.

What is the point of having separate brands? Particularly as a significant number of journeys would involve travelling on more than one branded train?

 

[Energy]

What is the point of having separate brands? Particularly as a significant number of journeys would involve travelling on more than one branded train?

Just having a different sub brand for a different region, they aren't a totally different brands.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If we look at IC (and indeed ICE) services in Germany they may call at multiple stations in a metropolitan area e.g. Hamburg Altona, Hamburg Hbf, Hamburg Harburg, Berlin Hbf, Berlin Südkreuz etc and stations that are not necessarily in a city.

And that's not really very different to the TPE Scottish services calling at both Piccadilly and Oxford Road (assuming they still do) - or indeed at Manchester stations and Bolton[1], the purpose of that is to provide more flexibility to those joining the service for a long distance journey, and not to carry people between those stations - and indeed, the local Verkehrsverbund passes and tickets are not valid for those journeys (though de-facto you won't get checked so you can fare-dodge those journeys if you really want to do them (note: this is not a recommendation), or if you're doing it properly I think there are actual ICE fares for those journeys, albeit a bit pricey).

So I don't think that breaks the IC brand either (and indeed the Scottish TPE services are probably about the only thing TPE operates that is really IC - the rest are really regional expresses which stop far more frequently and carry far more overlapping local journeys than long distance ones).

And similarly, the purpose of calling Avanti trains at Cov, Intl, New St and Wolves is primarily to allow flexibility of joining the service for a long distance journey. There isn't a problem caused by carrying those local passengers so they are carried, but there is no reason to design the service around that.

[1] The thing to remember about DB station naming is that they prefix any station in a conurbation that has mainline train services, whereas we only prefix the city centre ones, and not even all of those. If you used the DB naming concept in the UK we would have things like "Manchester Stockport", "Manchester Bolton", "London Watford Junction", "Birmingham Wolverhampton" and the likes (and that many people would find those somewhere between bizarre and downright offensive says that that concept wouldn't work here ).

 

[xotGD]

My suggestion: Rail England

Actually, no, my suggestion is nothing at all. It is either British Rail as a single entity or the dog's breakfast we have at the moment.

 

[David Goddard]

My suggestion: Rail England

Actually, no, my suggestion is nothing at all. It is either British Rail as a single entity or the dog's breakfast we have at the moment.

I was about to suggest BR last night but daren't for fear of being shot down!

 

[Bletchleyite]

My suggestion: Rail England

You nicked that off me, I suggested it elsewhere

The issue with it is that people in Wales and Scotland may object to it. That said, I don't see why they should object any more than passengers from Chester to Manchester should object to Transport for Wales. In essence they're just "international trains" and the people of mainland Europe seem to cope with the idea.

 

[John Hunt]

I was about to suggest BR last night but daren't for fear of being shot down!

My thought too. Only problem is that BR had a bad rep which would need fixing. If that bad rep could be fixed, all would be hunky-dory; no confusion about different operators, no need for ultra expensive advertising and promotion over multiple operators, no need for separate sets of station staff. The advertising and promotion costs for the new set-up would be drastically reduced (after the bad rep has been fixed).
Talking about the promotion side of things, does anyone remember the poster 'Have a good trip' (the boy and the station master on the platform) ? Probably one of the best promos I recall.

 

[tbwbear]

Some small elements of the of branding of Network South East still exist: my travelcard to London has NSE printed on it; I bought a discounted ticket from Maidstone to Winchester (using 3 TOCs) using my Network Railcard, etc...

I would start with the first brand right there - it doesn't have to be NSE but use something along those lines. With the exception of GWR, all the current TOCs could become "concessions" to be part of the one brand to cover the London and South East market. With the inevitable fall in season ticket revenue (several City companies I know have banished staff until January 2021 and some are even re-evaluating the size of their offices in London), I think this is where you will struggle most. One strong brand to try to get people on the train would be the way to go. The Network Railcard was itself an example of what was done before. "The new three-day-a-week Brighton commuter gets a free trip to Cambridge on Sundays..." that kind of thing....

Inter-City or Intercity or some other new word that means long distance and fast, is the next obvious one. If you remember how we struggled with 3 million unemployed in the 1980s, then you know we are going to have something stronger than "the famous five" to cope with 4 million unemployed over the next 4 or 5 years. It will be all about fighting car, coach and plane with cheaper innovative fares and consistent quality. You certainly need different branding to NSE. Again, with the exception of EMR and GWR, the new concessions already exist to be grouped together.

That leaves Regional England. I can't see any arguments for splitting that up any further.

So I think 5 brands would be enough: England, Scotland, Wales, "Fast" & "London"

That has to be better than trying to market as one "Network Rail" or whatever company it is handing out the new concessions.

Coronavirus, and the inevitable recession to follow, has already well and truly eaten the current "dogs breakfast".

PS - That model train above looks like one of those nice new ones that I saw the "Famous Five" riding on in a cartoon advert at a London cinema last year. Most of my clients are in the North East of England, what a shame the "Famous Five" trains don't go there too !

 

[tbtc]

my suggestion is nothing at all. It is either British Rail as a single entity or the dog's breakfast we have at the moment.

Agreed (but maybe for different reasons!)

Either we do it like London's buses (where everything is essentially branded the same way - maybe a small reference to the fact that it's "operated by Arriva" etc but certainly not the "20% branding" that London's buses had in the Ken Livingston days - like the First willow leaf on this image: http://www.countrybus.org/Dart_SLF/First/DML41311b.jpg)...

...or we keep the fairly bland liveries and TOC names that we currently have - ones that can be transferred to the new owners - names that are either roughly geographically relevant to the area (albeit there'll always be examples of journeys that are possible between two places that aren't both in that region).

Some of the current TOCs don't fit into just one region or geographical entity so I'm okay with vague names like "Avanti" (that can easily be passed on to another organisation contracted to provide the same services in five/ten years time) - it'd be tricky to come up with a simple name for it (e.g. if you call it London Midland & Scottish you firstly demote Scotland down to being as important as one English city or one English region plus you'll annoy the Welsh contingent... and it doesn't really serve much of the "West Coast" - Avanti trains probably see more of the North Coast of Wales than the West Coast of England!).

You can argue over whether the separate TOCs should have "complete'/ "some"/ "no" revenue incentives - maybe it should be a straightforward fee to run the TOC without any revenue incentives, maybe it should be like now with huge risk/rewards - maybe there are some TOCs more suited to one type of contract than the other.

But given where we are, we have a network full of messy services that don't fit into the kind of "binary" definitions that some enthusiasts want - not every service fits into the kind of simplistic "this is either an InterCity train OR a local train and there's no middle ground" approach - hence "InterCity" being a terrible brand to bring back - other than from the nostalgists who are incredibly focussed on a period of about five years over the two hundred years of the railway)

 

[tbwbear]

But given where we are, we have a network full of messy services that don't fit into the kind of "binary" definitions that some enthusiasts want - not every service fits into the kind of simplistic "this is either an InterCity train OR a local train and there's no middle ground" approach - hence "InterCity" being a terrible brand to bring back - other than from the nostalgists who are incredibly focussed on a period of about five years over the two hundred years of the railway)

To be fair, Intercity was around longer than 5 years, as a sub-brand it started back in 1965/1966: so 30+ years. "Intercity 125" was a hell of a lot stronger brand than Azuma, Nova321, "Famous Five Express", will ever be.

 

[Belperpete]

To be fair, Intercity was around longer than 5 years, as a sub-brand it started back in 1965/1966: so 30+ years. "Intercity 125" was a hell of a lot stronger brand than Azuma, Nova321, "Famous Five Express", will ever be.

But "Intercity 125" was a train, whereas "Intercity" was a company brand.

 

[tbwbear]

Inter-City 125 was the brand for the HST. It was derived from the Inter-City brand. The brand name was applied to coaching stock and used in advertising

I think this is 1970.

The argument is for a common brand for all long distance servcies as distrinct from others - It does not neccesarily need to be "Inter City"

The Italians use freccia, the French use Ouigo, the Germans use ICE etc....