I quite like Virgin Trains (the bacon sandwiches, the speed, the way everyone tries not to sit in the quarter of a carriage nearest a toilet – it’s the cameraderie it engenders) but they really need to get rid of their PR department. After losing their bid to run the West Coast rail franchise, the company seems to have taken on the arrogant yet flailing persona of an Apprentice contestant hauled up to the boardroom for the first time.
First we had Richard Branson’s apprearance on Newsnight, his angry, millionaire face beamed directly from his island retreat (whose idea was that?), and his petulant prediction that: “I think we will be seeing the end of Virgin Trains in the UK.” Now Virgin have published a list of 50 reasons why we should sign an e-petition asking the government to reconsider giving them the West Coast franchise. E-petitions are usually the province of charities or grass-roots protests and you can see it in the language Virgin tries to use. This runs uncomfortably alongside their usual corporate-speak, so we get phrases like the one in Reason 30:
60,000 people want to work for us, from over 30 different countries, and we’re always looking for the best people to do so.
(That isn’t global outreach, Virgin, it’s just basic corporate recruitment.)
Reason 49:
People think what we do is easy, until they try and copy it. You can teach anyone to do a job but you can’t teach somebody to care. We care.
(Though PR is demonstrably harder than it looks.)
Reason 22:
15 years ago people called it Mission Impossible, we read it as I’m possible.
(…as is reading)
…and Reason 45:
We didn’t have to be an Olympic partner to provide a gold medal winning service for athletes and customers alike.
The poor PR team are out of their depth here. Someone from Greenpeace should lend them a hand.
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