a common theme with bus company tweets

It's fair to say I spend a decent amount of time each day scrolling through the company timeline on Twitter.


The accounts we follow are predominantly made up of people/companies from the world of public transport and the creative disciplines. Sometimes I'm looking with no real aim, sometimes I may be doing research for a campaign, and other times it's to see what's being said in reaction to an event.

Whatever the reason, the result is seeing a lot of tweets. And seeing a lot of tweets by different companies on the same subjects, you often notice a pattern in their communication. This can be how they are written, or more often than not, how they look. Not necessarily the specific design detail but the content.

And when different companies (by companies, I  mean bus companies) tweet about driver recruitment or service updates, in particular, you can near enough bet your bottom dollar there will be a styled image of a bus on it somewhere. Sure as Boris Johnson has forgotten he went to parties in his own back garden, you'll find a glamorous looking bus taking pride of place on a jpeg.

Putting your end product on communication seems to be something quite unique to the bus industry. Even related transport alternatives like trains and trams tend to shy away from it.

Perhaps people believe it makes the message more relevant to their audiences? Maybe they think it's more likely to get noticed in a busy social media feed? Or maybe it's a case of 'respected company x is doing it so we need to do it too'?

Either way, I'm not sure I'll really get my head around the reasons why but I can't see the approach stopping any time soon!

Comments