PICTURE STORY
Page 63
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CONTRADICTIONS abound in the world of transport. Hauliers complain about the restrictions imposed upon them and at the same time refuse to support proposals that these restrictions should be abolished. There are politicians who are willing that the C-licerice holder should retain his freedom on condition that he does not use it for purposes of which they disapprove. The motorist makes more fuss than anybody else about the congestion caused by buses.
It is therefore no surprise to find the fact of congestion being used" to prove almost opposite points. The British Road Federation and the Roads Campaign Council have brought to perfection the presentation of a telling picture of a road jam as a reminder to the Government of the need for a bigger and better road-building programme. We had come to regard any photograph showing congestion as a symbol of a call for action. In one of their recent advertisements, British Railways have made use of such a photograph to illustrate a completely different moral. They have juxtaposed an aerial piCture of a stationary queue of cars with another picture of a train enjoying a set of rails to itself. .
Words are scarcely needed, and perhaps British Railways made a mistake even in supplying four by way of a caption; "The Choice Is Yours." The reader who can hardly fail to be captivated at seeing the two photographs side by side may, when he sees the text, begin to speculate on exactly what the choice involves. He may see it as a choice between doing what everybody else does and striking out literally on a line of his own; between going back to the old-fashioned form of transport and demanding that proper roads should be built.
Most people have ignored the words. Proof of the satisfactory impact of the advertisement is to be found in the volume of objections from road operators, They admit, it is effective and thereafter seek for reasons why it should not have been published. Their first objection is one that has become familiar. Because the railways are incurring huge losses, which have to be liquidated by means of a scarcely disguised subsidy from public funds, it is suggested that the British Transport Commission should cut their coat according to their cloth and reduce all unnecessary expenditure, above all that on advertising.
Justified Expenditure In the B.T.C. accounts, the cost of publicity for British" Railways is shown as a traffic expense. It amounted to nearly £1.6m. in 1959, slightly less than the figure for the previous year. There is no doubt that the expenditure is . justified. Some road operators, particularly small and. medium-sized hauliers, appear to find that paid Press advertising does them little good, but they make considerable use of other forms of publicity, possibly without recognizing them as such. A national organization of the size of British Railways has to use national publicity, including advertising, just as it has to use fuel.
Where the complaint against that advertising goes wrong is that it confuses the B.T.C. with an ordinary commercial undertaking. No independent concern could continue to incur losses like those of the Commission and remain in business. Parliament have decided that—at any cost, one is sometimes tempted to think—the railways must be kept going on a profit-and-loss basis. Having willed the end, the public must provide the means. This dictum, intended to sum up the right of railwaymen to be paid a decent wage, applies equally to the other activities of the railways. An attack on their advertising expenditure as a direet waste of public money is wide of the mark. The correct target is the original decision to subsidize the railways.
The next objection, arising out of the first, is against the content of the advertisement I have described and of others that have appeared recently. A cardinal principle of publicity forbids a direct attack on a competitor. It is permissible to say that a product is the best of its kind, and to enumerate its virtues, but not to specify the other products that must by definition be inferior.
In combination, the two photographs in the recent railway advertisernent are obviously to be interpreted as an attack•on the use of the roads. It is hard, however, to regard an attack in this form as particularly reprehensible. Road congestion is becoming an increasing problem and is universally deplored. The railways are drawing attention to one obvious solution, or partial solution, of the problem. It may be' a solution that vvould bring other and worse problems with it, but the railways are not compelled to give emphasis to this. Their approach is much the same as that of the manufacturer of a chemical that he believes would improve the performance of petrol or diesel oil. .
• . Holiday Season What must also be remembered in fairness to the railways is that the advertisement has -been appearing in the holiday season and that the vehicles shown in the photograph of the road are almost Without exception private cars. Only by considerably stretching the term can the owner of a car be described as a competitor of the railways, who can therefore be "knocked." The sufferers, if anybody, would be the ear manufacturers and dealers, and the suppliers of fuel, tyres and accessories. There may even be no intention of harming these. people.. Congestion occurs only at certain times and in certain places. The effect of the advertisement—aSsuming that it has-any—may therefore be not so much to stop the sale of cars as to cut down their use on over-busy routes that are also covered by rail.
It is hard to imagine that the advertisement would take traffic from hauliers. They provide a service for the carriage of goods. They do not convey the customer, and he therefore has no reason to be interested in the difficulties and
troubles of the route over which his goods travel. He wants them to be picked up as required, and delivered at the other end of the journey safe and sound and in good condition. . He would become aware of congestion only if as a result the vehicle failed to arrive where and when he• wanted it If this happens too often, he has to make up his mind whether to find another haulier or another form of transport.. Far from making his mind up for. him, pictures of congestion may help to keep him sympathetic towards the carrier who is serving him under great difficulties.
Possibly the pictures would have the desired effect on one or two C-licence 'holders because they visualize their own vehicles wasting time. The trader already knows that he has the choice .posed in the advertisement, but he can hardly feel affronted or 'attacked at having it pointed out to him. On other occasions, as in most of their annual reports, including the latest, the B.T.C. hint plainly or obscurely that it would do no great harm to curb the activities of the Clicence holder in the interests of the professional carrier.
The advertisement is innocent of any such intent. The trader might well wish that the railways would confine their propaganda to pictures.