Category: Communications disease

Some idiot has sold Transport for London, Ken’s transport quango, the idea that they should develop their brand hence the Your TfL advertsing campaign currently running across television, cinema, radio and billboards.

I have been chasing TfL to fess up to how much this is all costing. TfL started using https://www.billboardadvertising.org.uk/outdoor/bus-stops to help advertise. After three e-mails Sheila Sachania from TfL writes today with the final pieces of the jigsaw. They are spending £2.6 million on the Your TfL campaign. This includes about £1 million for telly slots, £500K for cinema, £270K for production of the ad itself and £520K for billboard sites.

Livingstone, rather than let TfL spend so much on advertising can we either have some more policemen or please give us some of our cash back.

The July edition of the Londoner plopped through my letter box today.

It is no surprise that Livingstone is against nuclear power. Apparently the headline “Londoners say no to nuclear power” follows from a MORI poll we have paid for. 45% oppose building new nuclear power stations. Maybe. They asked 1,006 people by phone and this is the answer they got. They don’t tell us the question! The poll is not published on the Mayor’s website so it is impossible to have much of an opinion about it. Certainly calling people at home during the day selects a pretty slanted sample.

The Rise anti-racism festival is another 80s throwback. With all the anti-stuff I feel 24 again when I read the Londoner. GLC deja vu. What a treat.

This £3 million a year fib fest is well down on advertising this month. No advertising at all this month from any organisation that has a choice about where it spends its advertising budget. Poor old Transport for London have to cough up for 3 whole pages. I bet their marketing department really hate the Londoner.

The London Mayor’s £3 million “free” newspaper dropped on my mat this week.

The front page story was free bus travel for London’s under-18s. Typically the article did not tell us how much this initiative is costing. We might like the benefits, but we should be told the cost at the same time though. A real newspaper would cover both sides of the story.

Although the Mayor admits to this piece instant recycling costing £3 million a year, he is not telling the whole truth. He makes the various parts of his empire pay for advertising so really he steals from their budgets and spends it on puffing himself up. The Londoner usually has 20 pages. This month fully 4 pages of ads are paid for by other parts of the GLA. There is less than half a page of real adverts. Your tube and bus fares are more expensive because of The Londoner and there are less police and firemen protecting us because of The Londoner.

In response to an enquiry I made on 6th February Nicola Golledge wrote today from City Hall to let me know how much The Londoner costs us. In the current financial year the budget for the Londoner was £2,882,800. Next year the budget is slightly reduced at £2,857,488.

I specifically asked her to tell me what advertising revenue they received from captive customers, eg Transport for London, the Met, etc. She did not divulge this information. When you consider that typically 20 pages of the Londoner include 3 full page ads from captive advertisers the budget is pretty meaningless.

The first thing that struck me reading the Ealing & Acton Gazette this morning was that the Mayor must have shares in it. Three full page ads from the Mayor’s empire:

• Hands up if you want lower emissions, London’s new transport tax being promoted by TfL. There is a consultation running until 24th April. Go to site and tell them that new lorries will reduce emissions anyway over time. The scheme will cost us £78 million
• Spot the difference, another Safer Neighbourhoods ad from the Met that ignores that Ealing only has 8 out of 23 teams
• Great family discounts, TfL trying to persuade us all to use Oyster cards

He likes to spend the money twice over as he already spends £3 million a year telling us all the same stuff in the Londoner.