Lessons in Rail Branding
by JFC AdminIn most of the UK the trains look a mess thanks to the way the franchising process works. When a new company takes over a franchise it always takes a few years before all their trains are rebranded. In many cases it’s even longer, in London you still often see trains in the old British Rail Network SouthEast colour scheme or the colour scheme of the past franchisee, many times you see a mix of colour schemes over various carriages on the same train. It doesn’t do a good job of setting brand identity.
There is an easy solution to the problem, the franchisees should not be allowed to brand the trains themselves but instead the government (or local transport authorities for regional services) should decide on the branding for each franchise which would mean that there’d be a more consistent look and feel across the railway and each franchise would build up recognition regardless of who is actually operating it.
One of the few companies that did a good job of rebranding their trains was GNER, they quickly got their original fleet branded in the GNER colours and was probably the first train company to have achieved consistent branding across the fleet. Since then there’s been the odd occasion where a carriage or two has been in the wrong colour scheme (mostly when they were leasing additional carriages to lengthen their HSTs) but they were quickly repainted in GNER colours.
GNER have also resisted the temptation to rebrand, some companies such have South West Trains have gone through a number of different colour schemes. The only changes to the GNER colour scheme over the years has been to paint the doors red, this was to meet accessibility guidelines so people with visual impairments could find the doors.
One rail company that will be having a consistent branding applied to it is London Overground. Since November this franchise has been run on behalf of Transport for London and it will be TFL, not the franchisee, that will decide on the branding of these services. Of course, as the franchise is new, the new branding as not yet been rolled out but once it has been it will stay consistent whoever owns the franchise.
Now GNER’s branding efforts are being undone, the GNER logos have been removed from the outside of GNER trains, some already have their red stripe replaced with a white stripe and it doesn’t look good. This is just a temporary look until the new livery is rolled out. The new look will be modern rather than traditional and I do think it looks OK, however, National Express have said it could take two years to rebrand all their trains. So for the next two years we’ll see a mix of the new livery and a botched up GNER livery.
If they’d called themselves Great National Express Railway they could have just kept the GNER branding and not uglified the East Coast Mainline for the next two years. I’m sure whatever the rights for the GNER name would cost would have worked out cheaper than paying someone to design a new look.