Bryan Larrabee,
President, TRANSIT MUSEUM SOCIETY
I was at an event in New Westminster and happened to meet David Keighron who is with the Marketing Faculty at Douglas College in New Westminster. They offer students a 4 year Marketing Degree that covers everything from marketing research, promotional strategy, marketing essentials to buyer behaviour. They offer practicums and work experience to students in their field of interest. I introduced myself to David as the President of the Transit Museum and he immediately suggested that we might have a common interest. We talked about how his 3rd and 4th year students might be able to help us develop a marketing strategy for our museum.
David does a series of half hour podcasts featuring businesses and other establishments that are looking for help in developing a marketing strategy. It may be a coffee shop hoping to establish an alternate brand different from Tim’s and Starbucks or it might be a tourism association trying to compete for the tourist trade against Vancouver or Whistler. They play the podcast in the classroom setting and challenge the students to use what they are learning and come up with ideas.
Since we are in the process of developing our own long term strategic plan, we thought that the Transit Museum (TMS) would be a good candidate for input from the students.
Some of our concerns were:
- How can we distinguish our “brand” separate from TransLink and Coast Mountain Bus? Many people think that we are just a part of corporate transit in Vancouver.
- How can we better use our Non-Profit Society status to raise funds?
- Our Mobile Museum attends many community events every year and we get literally thousands of people viewing our displays. How can we take advantage of that to establish our own “brand”, recruit more volunteers and raise funds for our society?
- How can we interest skilled volunteers like drivers, mechanics and trades people and keep them interested in the Museum?
- How can we increase our capacity to allow for vehicle restorations or larger projects?
David introduced me to Alison Phung, their Marketing Podcast Coordinator and we set a date to record our podcast. David was interested in why anyone would want to become a member of TMS and what we had to offer. He also wanted to know what advantages there were to being a non-profit society. Before the podcast we talked a bit about the questions we both wanted to put forward for the interview.
I believe we are the 15th podcast in the current series and I found David to be a very skilled moderator, keeping me on topic and asking a lot of open ended questions. For me it was a comfortable experience with something that I have never done before.
It will be interesting to see what the Marketing students come up with because they have a completely “outside” view of TMS. It might be a fresh perspective for us.
Douglas College has kindly allowed us to use the podcast so that our own members can hear it and come up with ideas and suggestions. I like this possibility because you probably have your own past experience with TMS and could bring a completely different perspective that the Marketing students won’t have.
Listen to TMS President Bryan Larrabee describing the aims of our Society and the challenges we face.
It’s only a half hour of your time so I hope you will listen to the podcast and give us your suggestions and ideas. You can start discussions or make comments below and you are welcome to contact me directly at president@transitmuseumsociety.org
(Here are two pictures of the Surrey Car Free event on Saturday June 8th, courtesy of Bryan Larrabee. )
On the subject of Fleet Maintenance, the group identified the need for a comprehensive survey of our buses – their deficiencies, strengths and weaknesses, and ease and cost of repair or restoration. With limited space and availability of personnel in Langley, with our vehicles scattered across three locations, there are significant challenges to accomplishing this task. Its implementation will depend of working through these issues.
