Robin9 wrote:
Roland Perry;140088 Wrote:
In message , at 10:25:48 on Wed, 11
Dec 2013, Peter CS ils remarked:--
Caroline Pidgeon, leader of the London Assembly's Liberal Democrat
group, said: "Barclays have received immense benefits from the
publicity given to the cycle hire scheme in its early years, but now
that its performance is looking shaky they appear to be bailing out.-
I wonder how many people are influenced to open an account with
Barclays
because of the sponsorship. Few people in England can be unaware that
Barclays exists and is a bank - and if they aren't, Barclays (like most
banks these days) doesn't brand itself as 'Barclays Bank' so just
seeing
the name on a bike won't help.
Conversely I wonder how many think that a bank that uses their money to
paint its name on bikes is maybe one to avoid.
So how 'immense' are the benefits?-
I think it comes under the umbrella of "Corporate Social Responsibility"
rather than "advertising", and many large companies have significant
such budgets. Wikipedia has a page on CSR, which covers most of the
rationale.
--
Roland Perry
Yes, but Caroline Pidgeon has forthrightly declared that Barclays Bank
has
received great benefits from this sponsorship. Does anyone know what she
is
referring to? Does she herself know? If there really were great
advantages to
Barclays from this arrangement, why are they so casually pulling out?
The
death toll is not attributable to them and does not reflect badly on
them. It's
Boris Johnson who needs to cover his back on this issue.
It would appear that this was a deal informally agreed between Diamond and
Boris. Now Barclays is reviewing many of Diamond's decisions, and it seems
this is probably one of several that's to be reversed. At the same time,
TfL should conduct a proper competitive tender for the replacement
sponsorship deal, not just have a private stitch up between Boris and his
mates. I'm not suggesting that it was corrupt, just that such contracts
such be agreed in a more open way. Perhaps such sponsorship would be more
valuable to some other organisation?