madcomments

Down the tube

Posted in Latest reporters' blogs, Jim Prior April 8th, 2009 by Jim Prior

The other day someone asked me where I’d got an obscure piece of information, about Bhutan, from. “Metro,” I said, “the source of all knowledge.”

It was a tongue-in-cheek reply — but it wasn’t made without some foundation. Metro is one of my favourite reads and a consistent source of brain fodder. But what it is that makes Metro so good is something more profound than just news, sport and gossip; it’s not the content that makes it work so well, but the context. It works because it creates a unique circumstance for itself, one that satisfies a latent need that many people have without even knowing it. It takes the dead time of tube travel and makes it into something useful instead. Something easy (it’s a simple read), yet something of intellectual and/or entertainment value. I’ve long considered Metro to be a great example of a brand that fundamentally understands its proposition and knows how to deliver it. Until now.

Last week I saw that Metro has launched a campaign intended to persuade us to take our copies of the paper with us when we leave the train and recycle them. It’s littering, apparently, if we leave them. This shows me that Metro doesn’t understand its brand anywhere near as well as I had thought.

You see Metro is so well established it has transcended its functionality and become cultural. It is not ‘littering’ to leave your copy of Metro on the tubes or buses, it is a public service to your fellow commuters. In fact almost the only emotional interaction that ever takes place between non-acquainted human beings on a tube train is the brief smile and warm eye contact that is exchanged when one places a paper down and another immediately picks it up. It is that, dear Metro,  that is your brand. And this advertising campaign undermines it.

As all discarded Metros get collected by LUL staff at the end of the line, and are presumably recycled, I’m not concerned about the environmental impact of my objections here. I just hate to see a good brand get it wrong.

Jim Prior is Managing Partner of The Partners