Monday 2 November 2015

The Witchway Saves The Day

In the interests of full disclosure, I am an admirer of Alex Hornby, CEO of Transdev Blazefield, and lucky to count him as a good mate so I might be slightly biased.
 
But today Alex drew my attention to this short film produced by his team and it deserves the widest possible audience. 
 
So much bus industry marketing and promotion is stale and formulaic and wouldn't know a boundary if it saw one - far less push it. So it is really refreshing to see something that is genuinely creative and original, and well put together. 
 
 

 
 
The Witchway is Transdev's high frequency express route from Nelson and Burnley into Manchester.  Despite being over thirty miles in length, the route achieves an incredible ten minute frequency at peak times, and every fifteen minutes off peak.  Vehicles are very highly specified nearly new double deckers, and from travelling on them I can vouch for the comfort they offer.  I once travelled on the Witchway into Manchester during the evening peak, and the constant procession of fully loaded double deckers coming the other way was an incredible sight.
 
However, the Witchway was faced with competition in May 2015 when the Todmorden Curve opened after years of delay, allowing trains to run directly from Burnley to Manchester.
 
Suddenly residents of the self-styled Capital of Pennine Lancashire had a choice of travel modes to reach the region's major city.
 
With a journey time typically 20-25 minutes longer than the train, this could have been a serious threat to the vitality of this important link.
 
However, Alex is always up for some excitement and Transdev have really taken the fight to the railways, reminding people at every opportunity of the many drawbacks of the train service:
 
  • Frequency:  The train is once an hour whereas the bus is up to every ten minutes
  • Convenience:  Manchester Road station in Burnley is away from the town centre, across the ring road and up a hill
  • Comfort:  The trains are standard issue Northern Rail multiple units dating from the '80s, often packed, and with uncomfortable seats and no legroom if one is lucky enough to be able to sit down.  By contrast, the buses are an oasis of calm with luxurious individual seats, vast legroom, tinted glazing and free wifi

To create a real point of difference from the trains, Transdev introduced night buses, running hourly between midnight and 3am from Manchester on Saturday nights, and reports suggest that these are proving hugely popular. 
 
This short film is clearly the latest step in promoting the advantages of the bus over the train, and it is extremely well produced in every respect, although the icing on the cake for me is the music.
 
Alex tells me that his Business Support Manager (or something like that) Ben Mansfield had a big hand in the production, and this is no surprise to me as Ben has a string of successful projects to his name from his time as a Management Trainee at trentbarton and subsequently as Service Performance Manager for me at TM Travel.  In particular, if you made it all the way to the end of my post about Peak Line 218 you'll have noted that he masterminded many aspects of that particular project.
 
A question that often arises in discussion among marketing types is when and whether it is acceptable to make negative reference to your competitor's product and when it is best to stick to promoting your own brand and product and almost pretend that others don't exist.  My view is usually that directly attacking competitors can show a lack of confidence in one's own product and isn't well received by customers. 
 
As with many things though there can be no hard and fast rules and each situation has to be considered on its merits.  This film shows that it is possible - by sticking to the facts, avoiding subjective opinion and investing in good production values - to highlight the deficiencies of the competition and thereby promote one's own product, in a professional and entertaining manner.
 

14 comments:

  1. All very well and good, but the one advantage of the train over the bus between Manchester and Burnley is TIME. Current Witchway journeys at peak time in the evenings back from Manchester are taking anywhere between 2 to 3 hours due to traffic issues. The train takes 45-50 minutes, and that is something that Transdev cannot compete against.

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  2. Train may have many drawbacks, but what is key for commuters using the X43 Witchway service daily is the time it takes to get back home after a long day at work. So while the bus is sitting in traffic along Bury New Road or crawling along the congested M60, the train service is getting them home in half the time.

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  3. Biased article. I would challenge you to spend a week using the X43 service at evening peak time coming out of Manchester, you'll soon be losing the will to live! Only have to take a look at the recent twitter feed for the company to see the level of customer dissatisfaction directed towards this particular route!

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  4. Um yes, I said myself it was a biased article at the start. It's a personal blog not investigative journalism! But actually I think the points raised in all three comments are valid and there are certainly advantages that the train has over the Witchway. It doesn't seem to me that any of that suddenly makes the Witchway a bad product or that it should go and hide in a corner, and so I applaud them for coming out with a positive message about the advantages that it can offer. I'm not totally sure without checking, but I think I've seen somewhere that they've actually acknowledged the issues that the Witchway is experiencing, so it will be a good test for them to see if they can win back customer confidence where it has been lost.

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    1. Points raised are indeed extremely valid and it would have helped to have balanced your piece if some of the current challenges being faced by Transdev Lancashire were included, and believe me it's been a very tough year with regards journey times at evening peak, and for that the train has become a very attractive alternative with time being the key driver. It's true that the company have finally begun to acknowledge some of the issues related to traffic in Manchester City centre, however it's important to note that this has only come about after a period of intense customer criticism, as before the management seemed happy to bury their heads in the sand in the hope that things would blow over.

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    2. Hi Anon at 1940 - Alex here. I can assure you we are not one for burying our heads in the sand and we've been monitoring performance every week and considering action, which has already included adding extra buses to help. Hopefully my more detailed comment elsewhere will help but you are welcome to contact me directly by email - alex(at)transdevplc(dot)co(dot)uk

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    3. I'm afraid it has felt like that at times though, especially via your twitter feed in the past when passengers have raised concerns over the route, and your social media staff have adopted an almost arrogant tone by basically saying they do not agree and that there is nothing wrong/nothing can be done etc. On a separate subject , I personally have had issues over the years with driver attitude/rudeness and feel that that is something which needs to be tackled. After all, they are the public face of your company and at times let you down with their manner.

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  5. Evening folks - Alex here. I appreciate that journey times can sometimes be longer than we all would like, most notably at rush hours (where, incidentally, we add extra buses to provide a better frequency and to reflect the increased congestion). This is something that I can assure is as frustrating for us and our drivers as well as our customers. More immediately, we are adding further buses and drivers into the system to help and our team at Burnley do a tireless job against some challenging circumstances. If you travel on the Witch Way, you will note us performing survey work to find out more about people's travel patterns, particularly relating to Manchester city centre, to help inform us about what we can do to improve things and speed up journeys. I'd urge you to offer your feedback via this channel, but obviously thank you for your comments and apologise for some of the delays you as customers may be experiencing at the moment. Saying all that, overall punctuality (which we consider on a weekly basis, using data based on every journey we operate) is remarkable given these circumstances but I thank you for bearing with us during times of delay. Meanwhile, the whole point of the video was to reflect the features of bus vs the train. Often the media concentrates on rail more than bus, even though many more millions of journeys are on the bus. We felt it was about time the bus spoke up for itself and, whilst we have seen people switch to the train, we used many of the comments made by customers who were loyal Witch Way users, gave the train a try and then came back to us as our inspiration.

    ALEX HORNBY
    Chief Executive
    Transdev Blazefield

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    1. Alex, you can increase the number of buses as much as you like, but whether you have 1 or 10 buses on the route traffic is traffic, and those buses are still going to be sat there on Deansgate, inching along at snail's pace. And as for overall punctuality, well of course your figures are going to be favourable, you have buses that run every 15 minutes that are going to run to timetable when traffic is light for the main part of the working day, that will cancel out that small evening peak window when everything goes pear-shaped, let's not kid ourselves now. It's good that you're finally looking to address these key issues and yes you should be commended for that, let's hope it's not come too late.

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  6. Well I personally switched to the train earlier this year and haven't looked back. I was becoming so frustrated with getting back home late on the X43 due to the horrendous traffic problems, and missing out on time with my family. Now I can be home in an hour. Sure the train may cost more and suffer from the odd delay and cancellation, but that can be overlooked if it means I get home from work in an evening in good time.

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  7. Buses and trains each have advantages and weaknesses. People on the W side of Burnley may well find the bus almost as quick as the train.
    If there is a choice of bus and train both modes will try harder to please passengers. If there is a major signal failure or a bad road crash you can switch modes and get home. What's unfair is that rail gets all the government funding, we need buses and trains, but why is there no money or political will for bus lanes?. Incidentally, despite the horrid road conditions, buses are a safe as trains.

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    1. Don't think the average passenger really cares much for money, funding or political will! They simply want to get home in the shortest possible time! And if there's no money or appetite for bus lanes, what is the pennine reach scheme all about then? Portland Street in Manchester is also having bus lanes installed! Not sure either why you've brought up the issue of safety, no one has mentioned that at all!

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  8. Yep, I'm afraid I was also a long time user of the Witch Way X43 service to commute into and out of Manchester for work, however the journey times were becoming unbearable so I switched to the train over the summer and haven't looked back, so sorry Transdev, you've lost me as a customer!

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    1. Me too, although I used to get the X41 service, it still suffered from the same awful traffic issues at evening peak times. I also found some drivers had terrible manners so I now drive to Bury and take the Metrolink, works much better.

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