DART birthday gift bag

Art(h)ur

I just got it today at Connolly 'to celebrate 25th birthday'. The bag (it's paper) looks quite cool, grey with anniversary logo. But it contains:
A bottle of mineral water (ballygowan with strawberry flavour)
A small pack of biscuits (digestives)
A pack of crisps (tayto)
A tesco keyring
A clerys leaflet
An easons bookmark (probably - it more looks like a price tag)
A lollipop with anniversary sticker on the foil

My point is: all these bits and pieces have absolutely nothing to do with dart or rail - it's like a small lunchbox. Apart from the lollipop, they don't have any sort of dart-related branding - just a regular collection of food and drink you can find in any supermarket. What is this all about? I just totally don't get how a tesco keyring or tayto crisps should make me think nicely about Dart (as I guess that's the whole idea of a giveaway - it's a marketing campaign, right?). So the company had a cost but will have no benefit - ridiculous!
Say, when coca-cola do it they give away their products (free drinks of new flavour usually). I understand that it's a bit harder for rail to do the same but still there should be at least some relation between those 'gifts' and the company that gives them. In this case there's none at all.
Any gadget that's useful, small and cheap to produce would be good here - pens, post-its, keyrings (why tesco ffs?) - there's million of things you can put a dart logo on.
Actually, the guy handing those bags over was wearing a nice grey tshirt with dart 25 logo and for a quick second I thought such tshirt will be there - no no no.
I just don't get it. (although the rest of the birthday campaign is going well, I think)

projectmayhem

...but it was free ?

It was just a nice free gift for commuters. You know it was for the DART birthday celebrations, and you got free swag that you'll use/eat. Boom boom. Win.

WIZE

You know when you've been tangoed

yayamark

Jeez u cant win with some people

Give away FREE stuff in a recession and Still people Complain. :rolleyes:

Chris_533976

At least food will probably be used.

ixoy

What time did you get it at? There was nothing at Pearse at rush hour this morning.

cor

Nothing at Pearse at 5:30pm this evening either.

Davy

ixoy wrote: »

What time did you get it at? There was nothing at Pearse at rush hour this morning.

Gone before 8 apparently

L1011

I'd presume they gave away whatever they could get for free themselves. Tshirts cost money.

Run_to_da_hills

The Sun had a special double decker bus parked outside Dunlaoghaire Dart station and were handing out free rags. Anything for the PR bandwagen and im surprised there was not more at it. I cant wait untill August 2nd when the real celebration starts.

Judgement Day

It's still a major improvement from the 150th anniversary of Irish Railways in 1984 when all CIE managed was to come with a highly 'imaginative' name - "Traen 150" - and absolutely nothing else!

In 1996 - the 150th Anniversary of Inchicore Works would have been another non-event were it not for the efforts of the preservation community. Good old CIE - never put a foot right.

You got a bag. This bag, you will probably use in the future, to carry your lunch to work or whatever, everyone you passed this morning saw the bag. They did not see the contents. However, they were hardly going to hand you an empty bag.

By branding the contents of the bag they would have wasted alot of money as you would have; drank the water, and gotten rid of the bottle, ate the crisps, thrown away the bag and so on and so forth, so basically you are the only person who saw the contents of your bag thereby making it a really bad advertising tool. The bag itself however, did it's job, it advertised the DART, it will probably continue to advertise the DART for some time to come.

Makes perfect marketing sense if you ask me.

Terrontress

Deleted User wrote: »

You got a bag. This bag, you will probably use in the future, to carry your lunch to work or whatever, everyone you passed this morning saw the bag. They did not see the contents. However, they were hardly going to hand you an empty bag.

By branding the contents of the bag they would have wasted alot of money as you would have; drank the water, and gotten rid of the bottle, ate the crisps, thrown away the bag and so on and so forth, so basically you are the only person who saw the contents of your bag thereby making it a really bad advertising tool. The bag itself however, did it's job, it advertised the DART, it will probably continue to advertise the DART for some time to come.

Makes perfect marketing sense if you ask me.

It's a paper bag.

Terrontress

Terrontress wrote: »

It's a paper bag.

Like, as per the OP? yeh, I got that, but thanks for pointing it out again.

The bag (it's paper) looks quite cool, grey with anniversary logo.

Judgement Day

Put it on eBay before it biodegrades.

Jonathan

Any body know the name of the band that were playing in Pearse St this evening?