Name Calling - Part 1

Continuing the Omnibuses series on MAP, in the days when corporate transnational identities tend to have swallowed local bus brands, let us not forget that short period in the history of the bus industry local identities flourished.

We’re talking here not of the pre-1930s before territorial operators began to hold sway but the period between 1977 and 1987 when there first appeared local brands on big-name bus companies and, later, when larger companies were split.

Both were a product of a central tenet of the National Bus Company of the time: the Midland Red Viable Network Project-inspired MAP or Market Analysis Project.

As if overnight, buses in local garage appeared with vinyl decals which tried (with varying success) to forge stronger links with the communities they served. This often coincided with MAP cuts in service and even loss of jobs – attaching a somewhat negative message to the brand name.

What is most interesting about the period is that it didn’t last. The conclusion in hindsight might be that local brands didn’t work. If only local branding had been used to emphasise the positive…

But actually, it lasted, but in a different way. In an extension of National Bus MAP thinking, NBC went the whole hog (badger?), spliting down companies to smaller units, thereby creating meaningful local operations that could become more accountable to local passengers and communities. A true brand in local ownership. Later, this was to set the scene for the wholesale privatisation of NBC.