Winners and losers on the Megabus

You won’t find many PR people who condone the old adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. But it’s fair to say there are some positive spin offs to difficult situations. Here’s a quick look at how the main protagonists fared in yesterday’s big story – the Megafuss.

The Megabus PR team must be scratching their heads this morning to decide what it all means. Their media response yesterday hit the right note – simple, factual, and understated, leaving room for people to focus on the emergency services. Pictures of Megabus holding up thousands of motorists wouldn’t usually be brilliant for the cuttings. But how many train travellers might think Megabus next time they’re booking from London to the north west? The brand will be the butt of jokes for a while, but in return it has suddenly become a household name. All in all, it probably turned out OK.

Whether police with guns make people feel safe depends how far you are from the guns themselves. On screen, this has come across as a well-planned, professional operation that shows our emergency services are ready for Olympic threats. Up close, bus passengers complained of having guns pointed at them as they left the vehicle. This must have been terribly frightening, but it is of course what police with guns are expected to do. The debate will rage as to whether the response was proportionate. Yes, it was an over-reaction now we know the cause of the alert. But as several ‘security experts’ were quick to tell us in the newspapers, we can expect police to err on the side of caution given the events of this summer. All in all, the emergency services looked ready to handle a major incident and they handled people in a dignified way when they could. A decent result.

But the biggest winners must be the electronic cigarette manufacturers. National newspapers have devoted illustrated box-outs to these gadgets. We’ve been told who might like to use them. And we now know they’re legal to ‘smoke’ on public transport. Expect a spike in sales and a similar spike in calls to the emergency services.

So everyone comes out ahead. Unless you were one of the poor souls on the bus or in the tailback of course.

Jon Bennett
Director
jon@linstockcommunications.com