Selling CaRT to the public
I HAVE to admit that I had a wry smile on my face and I had to suppress the urge to shout out loud 'I told you so' when I read in Allan's (Chugging companies blamed again) that Simon Salem now firmly puts the blame for low 'friends' recruitment upon a lack of brand awareness, writes Mick Fitzgibbons.
It struck me, that any Trust wanting to be careful with financial management would have looked at re-branding very carefully and from a position of cost saving being paramount. But then personal vanity has no limit when its not coming directly out of your pocket. The logo 'British Waterways' could have been retained and re-used. The population had known that name for many years. British Waterways Trust for instance.
Fortune could have been saved
Money could have been saved on replacing signs and sticky labels. A fortune could have been saved on vehicle re-branding alone.
Why is Simon also surprised at the chugging companies for refusing to work with him? I'll let him into a little secret, if you can't sell the product to the chuggers (who are not exactly known for being shy and refusing easy income) why would you think you can sell the same product to the public.
The chuggers will have seen all the recent bad publicity surrounding the recent boat evictions and would not want to touch it with a 3.04800 metres barge pole. Bad news always comes at a price for a chugger. They could do a great deal of work only to be thwarted in their endeavours. A million pounds of bad publicity costs many millions more to overcome. The biggest obstacle for the Trust is time. Joe Public will remember the issues for a long time to come and his memories fade slowly. Search engines will turn up the news for many years to come. Facebook and Twitter are already hosting much information.
Total rethink
What is needed is a total, ground up, root and branch rethink of the 'brand' and the direction. Drop the public relations nonsense because the public now (after the MP's fiddling expenses) recognise spin when they see it, and to be honest you don't do it very well anyway.
If you want members of the public to be your 'friend'—then treat them like friends. Your biggest advocates for the future are the boaters. A good start would be creating a paid membership of the Trust. Made up of people with many and varied interests who would be supportive of the inland waterways in ways you can't imagine. So that the Trust officers become answerable to the membership. Let the paying membership help to decide and guide policy—You can then stop pushing against the rip-tide of dire public opinion.