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First Bus stops short of customer focus

Singing First Bus driver

Is this First Bus driver alone in singing its praises?

I recently posted a quick comment on my Facebook page, regarding the strange direction the Rachel’s Organic brand appears to have taken with its television advertising.

Less than a week later, a new contender for the irritating advertisement category has come on the scene, courtesy of First Bus.  Let me qualify irritating, as it is on many levels.

First off, the content is fairly painful.  On first viewing, you would be forgiven for expecting the commercial to evolve into something akin to Yeo Valley’s rap.  But no.  The singing bus driver and red carpet roll out for passengers is all very deliberate in linking with the catchline:  We believe every journey should be the greatest one of all.

A mighty shame then that neither First Bus nor its sing-song advertising team consulted the word on the social media street.  A quick ‘first bus’ Twitter search reveals a stream of unhappy customer comments; its Facebook page demonstrates no user interaction at all.

So where will this great journey experience come from?  Listening to customers.  Social media provides the opportunity for businesses to engage with end users and add value to their customer experience.  It would appear First Bus has at some stage been advised to adopt an online presence, but the value in its current social communication is limited and potentially, damaging.  Its Facebook page has not been updated since June.

The commercial does not appear to have been embedded in the First Bus website, nor does “We believe every journey should be the greatest one of all” feature on the homepage.  All very odd.  Is anyone from First Bus listening?

My conclusion:  the opportunity for a new marketing campaign linking offline with online activity and real First Bus users has been overlooked entirely.

More customer feedback follows, within the comments below the uploaded version of the advert on YouTube.