Cutting out the frills
Page 60
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HAULIERS in general spend very little money on prestige advertising. They may ask themselves from time to time about the need, especially when they observe that other industries„ under attack from the environmentalists and from other sources, will buy considerable space on which to put forward their own arguments.
The customary conclusion is that, if something similar has to be done for road transport — more frequently the target of attack than most other interests — the industry's associations should take on the task. As the members are unwilling to pay the fairly susbtantial levy that would be needed for the national campaign, the idea is as regularly shelved.
Attracting customers
Few operators are large enough to do anything effective on their own. Those that are have other uses for their advertising and propaganda budget. Most of it is devoted directly to attracting customers by setting out what services are provided. Some of what is left over may go towards outlining a philosophy of transport, and this also may be a marketing device to flatter the customer who likes being solicited on a high intellectual plane.
• The National Freight Corporation is particularly adept. Of the various individuals and organisations that appeared before the Parliamentary Select Committee when it was considering the railways, Sir Daniel Pettit, the NFC chairman, gave the best impression of a forward-looking approach.
British Rail, NFC and National Bus, he predicted, would be replaced some time before the end of the century by three inter-modal bodies. One would assess investment in road and rail in the light of market needs. the other two, clearly separated from the first, would operate freight and passenger services by both modes of transport.
Such a development would require legislation. Nothing resembling it is likely to be included in the White Paper that the Secretary of State for Transport, William Rodgers, intends to publish soon. For any chance of success, there would have to be substantial changes of opinion among politicians, as well as trade unions, transport operators and transport users.
Although apparently proposing the dissolution of his own NFC, Sir Daniel had its promotion still in mind. If it did not exist, there would be much less point in his forecast, which can be regarded as an attempt to resolve a familiar dilemma.
The transport operator, at least when he launches his business, has a choice between providing a service which conforms to the wishes of his customers, or setting up an organisation which he can then persuade trade and industry to use. Most haulage undertakings fall somewhere between the two extremes, and the successful operator is the one who can best reconcile them. Sir Daniel's solution is ingenious. He would split State-owned: transport so that the section engaged in discovering and analysing the needs of the consumer was, in the fashionable phrage, at arm's length from the integrated companies that would meet those needs.
Not everybody would see things in the same way, or even admit that there is a problem. Industrial groups with a transport subsidiary would perhaps claim, at least in their advertising, to have the best of both worlds.
Publicity by the Ravensdown Group crystallises the attitude. goes out of its way to emphasise that customers who may be doing business with the group's'freighting division are connected, through the parent company, with other activities such as store fitting and the provision of swimming pool equipment. Ravensdown Freight Services, it is pointed out, which presumably had its origin in the transport needed by tho: other activities, has a chain of divisional depots available and at the same time can offer what is described as a "responsive" service, in other words just the service that the customer demands.
There is something here reminiscent of the conjuror who invites you to pick any card, but knows in advance which one ii will be.
Possibly on the principle tnat the whole is sometimes greater than the sum of its parts, the group goes out of its way to stam its identity on its component companies. Most groups brimarily or wholly engaged in transport resist this tendency in their advertising and other publicity.
The subsidiaries Seem as reluctant to reveal their parentage : the tobacco manufacturers must be to print their statutory warning. The companies within the NFC, for example, are usua satisfied to acknowledge the connection in small type in a position where it is least likely to be noticed.
Publicising services
This is not merely a characteristic of the State-owned undertaking. The Transport Development Group has also found that hiding behind its subsidiaries has done no harm. Without too much effort, it secures frequent mention of its name in the financial columns, usually greatly to its advantage, but there is seldom anything published to connect it with the companies ttu make the money and have their own ways of publicising their services.
Hauliers may have to reconsider the bread-and-butter approach to advertising when more is known about the Government's plans for transport, or if Sir Daniel's forecast appears to be gaining support. In the meantime, there is unlike to be much change.