It's barely two months since the dangleway got a new name, and what do you know next month it's getting another.
The new sponsor is Swedish IT company IFS who've chosen to name it not after themselves but one of their services, IFS Cloud. From October the cable car will therefore be rebranded as the IFS Cloud Cable Car, serving terminals at IFS Cloud Greenwich Peninsula and IFS Cloud Royal Docks, and I seriously doubt anyone other than TfL will be calling them that.
This time last year the call went out for a new sponsor to replace Emirates after their ten year deal expired, then in February came the embarrassing news that no company was interested. In June the dangleway reverted to a default name, the London Cable Car, but only on maps and diagrams while the Emirates branding lingered on at the terminals. That's likely because TfL knew they had a new deal in the pipeline so there was no point physically rebranding twice, whereas adding stickers or slapping up vinyls is relatively cheap.
The IFS contract is for at least two years, generating at least £1m. Every penny counts in an era where the government's squeezing the purse strings, although this is a drop in the ocean compared to the £740m funding gap in the latest deal. And for this million quid IFS gets to prostitute their brand not just on the cablecar itself but on the tube map and across the wider TfL network. They also get their own roundel in their choice of colour, the right to replace the moquette in the cabins and their name plastered all over "promotional megasites" at Canada Water, Canning Town, Waterloo, Westminster and Royal Victoria stations.
IFS is an intriguing choice of sponsor, indeed far from a a household name. You could see the point of Emirates promoting itself to families and other visitors who might also make international journeys by plane, but a company specialising in cloud-based enterprise software has none of that broad appeal. Hardly anyone who rides the cable car will ever need to create business agility within a scalable composable environment, let alone be interested in the brandspeak gobbledegook IFS will unleash across the attraction. But IFS must be hoping that at least one chief executive gains awareness and switches over their company's platforms as a result, indeed a tourist attraction outside the ExCeL centre is a decent place to try to snare one.
Intriguingly IFS software is integral to the day to day running of the cablecar, a partnership dating back even to the construction phase, so there is a sense of TfL management ringing round their suppliers saying "go on, you'd sponsor it wouldn't you?" until one of them said yes. The frankly ridiculously-titled IFS Cloud Cable Car is the result, a name that plainly isn't going to catch on. It fails to trip off the tongue, it's cumbersome and meaningless, indeed it's not even obvious how to pronounce IFS in the first place. But it's already done its job simply by getting all of us to talk about it, and no doubt that's what the next sponsor of the cablecar will eventually think too.
TfL have of course brought out a press release to trumpet this new deal, and it contains several sentences I'd now like to rip the piss out of. Buckle up.
"The partnership with IFS is an exciting opportunity to continue to build on the success of the most unique part of London's skyline" [Josh Crompton, Head of the London Cable Car, TfL]
Oh Josh, not only is there no such thing as "the most unique part of London's skyline", even if there was it wouldn't be your cablecar.
Initially popular for journeys between London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games events at The O2 and ExCeL London, it is now a top London attraction with increasing leisure and sightseeing trips, as well as being used for travel between the north and south of the River Thames.
Obviously it's used for travel between the north and south of the river, you muppets, there wouldn't be any point in it existing otherwise. Also stop with this fiction about it being popular for journeys between Olympic events. Almost nobody had tickets for an event at North Greenwich followed the same day by an event at ExCeL, or vice versa, this was just a lie spread at the time to justify its existence.
The proximity of the cable car to a multitude of hotels, restaurants and services on both sides of the river opens the city up for people to explore both sides of the river. With positive reviews online and on social media, the London Cable Car continues to add great value as a London attraction.
Dear TfL, I am available as a copywriter for a fraction of the fee you're currently paying someone to write this meaningless bolx.
It links with the new Elizabeth line station at Custom House just a short walk away for services towards Paddington or Abbey Wood.
It does, but why would you use the cablecar from North Greenwich to Custom House when you could instead take the Jubilee line straight to Canary Wharf and save yourself £5 in the process?
"IFS is a rapidly growing global technology company and the opportunity to have our brand intrinsically linked with a visible part of the London transport system is fantastic. As well as being iconic, the IFS Cloud Cable Car will proudly serve a diverse customer base of Londoners, tourists and business travellers from around the world on a practical level." [Oliver Pilgerstorfer, Chief Marketing Officer, IFS]
Certainly better than having your name linked to an invisible part of the London transport system, Oliver. And sorry, if the best synergy you can find between your company and the cable car is that you both "proudly serve a diverse customer base", you are probably wasting your money.
Notes to editors
• One-way journeys for £5 and £2.50 apply if purchased online in advance, otherwise it is £6 for adults one way or £3 for children on the day for walk-ups
No you greedy hustlers, it's not £6 unless purchased online in advance, passengers can also pay £5 by turning up with Oyster or contactless, how can you possibly have got that wrong?
It's very much my role to sit here sniping at the cablecar, in particular for not being what it set out to be and for having a vastly over-inflated opinion of itself. But with this ridiculuous garbled rebrand, and all to earn a miserly £1150 a day, they really have excelled themselves. IFS, FFS. Let's just carry on calling it the cablecar, or better still the dangleway, and let the tourists carry on riding it in peace.
