The Lifestream of Jon Moss

East Coast Brand

December 9 2009, 9:57am

It's taken me quite some time to come to terms with the fact that the new East Coast branding is a huge opportunity missed. Launched in November, the new company took over from the disastrous franchise that National Express delivered.Apparently National Express were losing squillions of pounds every second and couldn't make it pay. Odd that, because every train we travelled on was always rammed solid and whenever we went to London we had to remortgage the office building to buy a peak time ticket. Anyway, the government took it off them (or they handed it back, I'm not sure) and it's now being run by a new company set up by the government with all the same staff and rolling stock. Everything at the moment is in the process of being rebranded so it's the predictable mess that happens in this changeover situation.What I was looking for when the new brand appeared was a statement of intent: things are going to be different, just you wait and see. A confident brand that spoke of the rich heritage of the East Coast mainline that proudly carries the people of the North into London to do business and enjoy the big city. And then I saw it. A dull, hastily designed badge that spoke of a breathtaking lack of ambition. 'Does what it says on the tin' said one of my Twitter followers. I accept that this might be an angle to approach the brand - efficient, solid, no nonsense, gets on with the business of running trains - it's not even that. It's nothing.There is talk that if East Coast make a success of the running of this line, then it might even provoke the government to review it's policy on rail line franchises. All the more reason then to get the branding right then. I understand that money might be an issue, but there are scores of branding companies in the North who are more than capable of making a much better fist of what currently adorns the train carriages.It does raise the interesting question: does it really matter? As long as the trains run on time, ticket prices are right and the overall experience is a good one, then why bother? And I can see that side of the argument too. the last thing we need is a fabulously branded service that's rubbish. I would ask these people to look to the continent, where the rail organisations (admittedly mostly national) care about every aspect of the experience and the branding is simply part of that and taken very seriously indeed. Which is how it should be.