Are blue cycle lanes a brand step too far?
Am I the only Londoner who’s alarmed at the sudden blue river of paint that has been poured over certain roads in our beloved capital of late? One morning we were whizzing along on our bicycles in old running clothes in plain old bus lanes, or if we were lucky, reddish tracks at the side of the road. You could see where these tracks were, but they didn’t jump out at you and knock you off your bike. Then, one morning I turned left at Kennington, and there it was - a big bold river of blue paint blighting the cityscape.
Being of innocent persuasions, I thought some worthy research had shown cyclists stand out better on a blue background. That surely could be the only excuse for painting a portion of London’s roads a ghastly garish blue. Then slowly it dawned on me that the Barclay’s cycling scheme springing up around the city might be somehow connected. Even so, I never for a moment imagined someone had given the nod - official permission - for a corporation (a banking one at that) to paint London’s roads in their corporate colours.
Yet that appears to be the case. A ghastly, corporate blue that is a blight on the landscape that is London. Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-corporation, and as one of London’s billion cyclists, I am grateful to Barclays for sponsoring our shiny new cycling scheme. Anything we do to make the city a more environmentally sound and safer place gets the thumbs up from me. Nor am I naive about branding. It’s what I do for a living. I like a powerful colour palette, a name with instant recognition, bold messages, logos with standout. I inwardly smile when I spot the clever integration of a brand’s values into sponsorship. But there are some things that are communal, beyond branding. Like streets and roads. So I am left puzzling how a bank persuaded the Mayor to paint our streets in their corporate colours, and no-one has turned a hair.