NO LIMIT TO WHERE THE COUNCIL ARE PREPARED TO THROW AWAY OUR MONEY!

We all know the tremendous waste that emanates from some of the decisions made by Tameside council bosses. This is because many people appear to have been given responsibilities far beyond their abilities. Consequently, in their quest to improve public services, councillors and council bureaucrats alike, are throwing our money around like confetti

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To illustrate my point, take the article in last week’s Reporter which told of the council’s efforts to ensure carers get the help and support they need.

In order to get their message across, we were treated to a picture of Cllr Brenda Warrington, pointing to a bus side advertising poster.

(NB -This photograph is 4 times larger than the one which accompanied the press release and it’s still illegible!)

Now several aspects of council inefficiency spring to the fore here. Firstly, the inaccuracies and conflicting messages contained within the short Press Release. 

In launching the ‘Prepared to Care’ campaign, we were told that ‘one in eight’ of us will become a carer at some point. But then, a few short lines later, a lady named Lina Patel, (This was how the lady's name appeared in the article) a Carer Centre Manager, told us ‘three in five’ of us will become a carer at some point!

So which is it?

My next question queries the council’s choice of media. 

Outdoor advertising is a type of advertising medium that involves posting messages and promotional items ‘outside’ where people can see, read and react to them.

Therefore, the most important part of a successful bus ad campaign as chosen to spear-head the council’s campaign, should be the content of the ad.

However, if your objective is to talk directly to a small, specific audience, (which, based on the council’s own figures is estimated to be a mere 8.2% of Tameside residents) then generally speaking bus side advertising is incredibly wasteful, as most of the people who see it will not be in the target market. Therefore I can confidently predict that if these ads were issued by a private company, who had to show a ROI, the choice of media spend would be somewhat different!

Now let’s look at the design.

Design work is nearly always subjective, however, when you look at the design of Tameside council’s poster it is clear that whoever put it together has lost sight of the fact that this bus poster is basically a moving billboard, and it’s likely to be travelling past a potential reader at 30mph! It’s not unusual for misguided advertisers and inexperienced designers fall into the pitfalls of overstuffing the ad/poster with too much information, but the result is that the ad/poster becomes too cluttered and the message; as clearly illustrated in this example, gets totally lost. Therefore not only does it render the ad/poster illegible, the choice of booking bus sides to champion this ad campaign is a complete waste of money!

Most experienced advertising people will tell you that for an ‘exterior’ bus ad’ to be effective; the message you are trying to deliver should be condensed and expressed in no more than 3 lines and if you are trying to create a lasting impression, the advertisement should be placed on specific routes/time schedules, based on the target audience’s opportunities to see standard formula, and should run for at least a 12 week period.

Unfortunately, the Press Release is not clear on the campaigns scheduling or duration, it merely states: Tameside council’s ‘on-going’ campaign.

Having decided on the best method of reaching their target audience and the council’s media advisor having deemed that their target audience could be best identified as public transport users, then, I would have thought that interior bus adverts would have been a better choice, as they would maximise their message and exposure to bus passengers during regular journeys. The fact that bus passengers are in a captive environment for more than 25-35 minutes makes interior bus advertisements ideal for communicating more ‘detailed’ messaging in tactical ‘call to action’ campaigns as this one.

So, in this short ‘run of the mill’ story, the likes of which are issued weekly and in abundance from the bowels of the Town Hall, it only goes to illustrate just how much money is wasted by being spent inefficiently by groups of unqualified, inexperienced, decision makers.

In this case, that’s the person who initially proposed the media, the person who then approved the choice of media, the person who wrote the poster, the person who designed and produced the artwork for the poster. The person who wrote the Press Release, the person who read and approved the Press Release and passed it for publication and finally the councillor who cheerfully posed to endorse the campaign launch.

Those seven inexperienced people are earning wages and are wasting our money on an ‘on-going’ weekly basis!

No wonder these people fear ‘the cuts!’