I spent a long time on the M5 yesterday – zooming to North Devon and back with Thom and Ben the Video Guy to shoot some video with our friend Keith Crockford from the Bucket List Company.

(Who, by the way, has a fantastic January offer available, so if you’re an adventure travel aficionado, I’d highly recommend heading HERE).

Having made this journey a fair few times, I’m well acquainted with all the service stops on the way down, from the luxury of Gloucester to the horror of Bridgwater.

Sedgemoor was our stop of choice yesterday, and as we picked up a few supplies, we were also confronted with this flower wall – the kind of thing that’s been made popular by trendy restaurants and bars as a way of encouraging people to tag them on social media and help them increase their reach.

I hopped onto Instagram and did some searches to see how well this particular wall is working for Sedgemoor, and – well – you can probably guess the results.

In more than a thousand #roadchef posts, and aside from the company that installed the wall, and one services influencer (yes, really) named The Services King, I didn’t find a single person willing to photograph themselves in front of this backdrop and post it on ‘the Gram’. 

Which isn’t a surprise, and highlights a significant error on the part of the Roadchef marketing team: copying something from a completely different business and assuming it’ll work for you too.

Restaurant visitors are out for fun, are likely looking their best, have time-a-plenty, and if they post on social media, a night out is likely to be a prime opportunity to do just that. 

Services visitors are on the way somewhere, probably windswept (definitely yesterday), and have little or no desire to inform the world that, yes, they really did get to stop at Sedgemoor.

Plus, even if they did, the chances of these hypothetical posts actually changing behaviour?  

Very slim – service stops are born out of necessity, and are rarely driven by the opportunity to see a wall full of faux flowers, and broadcast that you’ve just passed Webbington.

Just because something works for one business, it doesn’t mean it’ll work for yours.

Market, message, media.  In that order.  Always.

Seb

P.S. If you’d like help making sure your marketing is built around your market – not borrowed from someone else’s – book a free 3XM Business Growth Call and let’s make sure you’re putting your time and budget into things that will actually move the needle.