Press releases

Arriva Scotland West is putting a friendly face to its latest marketing campaign by featuring local bus users as ‘model passengers’ on posters, timetables and other literature.

When the Renfrewshire based business embarked on an overhaul of its customer information and marketing materials, the team thought: who better to ask than Barrhead’s photogenic bus users? 

Arriva enlisted the help of contacts in the local community to sign up friends and neighbours for a photoshoot and were overwhelmed by the positive response from people who wanted to get involved. 

Now the results of the photoshoot are in and a selection of pictures have been posted on the buses with a thank-you to those who took part.

The photos showing local people on their day to day journeys are now being incorporated into posters, timetables, leaflets and bus display vinyls for use across the region.  They convey a real sense of community spirit and show the importance of buses in people’s lives.

Arriva Scotland West marketing manager Sharon Morrison said: “Arriva and its predecessors have served the people of Renfrewshire for more than 90 years, and in some areas is the sole operator offering communities a local, dependable bus service.  So the decision to replace all photography with real life snap shots of real local people was an obvious choice and we could not be happier with the results “

Following the success of the initiative Arriva Scotland West plans to include more local customers in photos in the future.

Ralph Roberts, director and general manager of Arriva Scotland West, said: “We would like to thank the kind people of Barrhead for donating their time to assist in the photoshoot. The shoot took four days to complete and all participants acted with the utmost professionalism and showed great community spirit.

“We are a local bus company and we really wanted this message to come across in all our information leaflets and posters and the results, with real people making real journeys, are fantastic.”

Local resident, Jan McColl who helped sign up neighbours for the photoshoot said: “I think the idea of Arriva putting local people on the cover of their timetables and posters is really good.  I organised the models and was surprised by the amount of people who wanted to take part.”

Another model, Rita Connelly, said: “My husband Brian and I took part in the Arriva photoshoot – it was a great laugh.  Lots of people have been telling us that they saw our photo on the bus.

“It was also a wee bit special for Brian and me, as well as being locals we are also ex-employees too.  We worked for the bus company when it was Western.  I was a clippie and Brian was a bus driver.”

Image caption: Denise and Emily happily making their way to the local sports centre

See more Barrhead people who feature in Arriva's literature