Don't go zombie

Change-Agents get around London by tube like anyone else and this week our attention has been captured by Virgin Trains’ cross-track poster.

Virgin would like us to try their shiny new high speed trains to Manchester and presumably forget any previous unpleasant experience we may have had on one of their older slower models.

The poster demands instant attention in between Bakerloo Line trains and wastes no time in superfluous text. It’s even being backed up with a rather cool on-line game.

We liked the simplicity of the message: here’s a good reason to change the way you go to Manchester.

If you come with us, it implies, you can look like the President of the United States and have a whole carriage to yourself and your personal assistant.

Better still, you’ll stay well clear of the living dead who are littering the M6 in their gridlocked cars in what Dante would have immediately recognised as a highway to Hell.

Change is often like this. Although the metaphor isn’t particularly new, it’s apt enough in its recognition that many of us will cling to the familiar even when that routine has become outdated.

At Change-Agency, however, we don’t see those who are reluctant to change as the living dead.

For us, they’re important individuals whose experience has made them harder to convince and whose opinions and behaviour we need to understand if we are to design a change programme that really works for everyone – even those who are rather grey and frayed at the edges.