Meet Opus
When Montreal’s new public transit smart card was officially launched in late April, most of its details had already been known for months. There was, however, one surprise: its name, Opus, which was chosen from more than 1,000 proposals and then kept secret for nearly four years.
Many transit users like smart cards because they allow them to store cash value and multiple passes or tickets on a single card. Transit agencies like them because they reduce fraud and make it easier to adjust fares and analyze passenger flow. More than that, though, they are valuable marketing tools. That’s why, in cities around the world, so much emphasis has been placed on coming up with a catchy name to anchor a strong brand identity.
For the Société de transport de Montréal, which led Montreal-area transit agencies in the creation of the new smart card, creating a memorable name was essential.
“Three hundred fifty thousand people buy a métro pass each month and they use it every day. With a smart card, they need to keep the card permanently, so we need to build a relationship between it and the consumer,” STM spokesperson Odile Paradis said in a phone interview. “They need to keep it, take care of it, make it part of their lives. If it didn’t have a name, it would just be an anonymous access card that nobody would care about.”
Opus is being phased in, starting with a small test group now, and expanding to students this summer and the general public in September. The old turnstiles are to be removed next June.
In 2004, when the STM asked its employees what the new smart card should be called, it received 1,394 proposals. Eventually, it whittled that number down to just four: Transcité, Transit, Sesame and Opus.
“Our criteria were that it was a simple word that was easy to remember, that it was as easy to say in English as it was in French, that it was marketable,” Paradis said. “It was Opus that really passed the test. It’s short, it has Latin roots and it is used in different languages. It also means a creative work and it refers to a numbered musical composition, which is appropriate because each card will have a number. ‘Carte Opus’ also rhymes with ‘carte à puce’ ” (smart card).
The idea of branding smart cards goes back to the launch of Hong Kong’s Octopus Card in 1997. Since then, it has become enshrined in the city’s pantheon of pop culture, appearing frequently in films, television shows and even on red “lucky money” envelopes.
Its popularity might have something to do with its meaningful name. In Cantonese, the Octopus Card is known as baat daat tung, or “eight arrive card,” which refers to an old proverb, sei tung baat daat, that means “reachable in all directions.” Eight is also a lucky number in Chinese culture, so the symbolism was retained in the card’s English name, which refers to a sea creature with eight tentacles.
Closer to home, Boston’s smart card, the CharlieCard, takes its name from a 1948 folk song, “Charlie on the MTA,” about a man who is trapped on the Boston subway because he can’t afford to pay the new five-cent exit fare: “Charlie handed in his dime / At the Kendall Square Station / And he changed for
Jamaica Plain / When he got there the conductor told him, / “One more nickel”/ Charlie could not get off that train.”
Since its launch in late 2006, the CharlieCard has provoked a lively reaction among Boston commuters.
Adam Gaffin, a journalist who runs the Universal Hub, a website that keeps track of what’s being said on Boston blogs, pointed to comments posted online about the CharlieCard. Some objected to the appropriation of a protest song against fare hikes by a smart card that makes such increases even easier to implement. Others claimed that they had never heard of “Charlie on the MTA” before the CharlieCard was introduced.
But for the most part, Gaffin said in an email interview, Bostonians seem to have responded well to the name.
“I think Charlie and the local transit system were already so intimately tied together there really wasn’t any question that CharlieCard would be the winner right away – it was one of those rare things that just clicked instantly and really required no adjustment.”
For now, it is too early to tell how Montrealers will respond to Opus. The STM’s Paradis, for her part, is convinced they will take to it with enthusiasm. “I think Opus can become a point of reference for Montreal,” she said.
“We launched the card in April and already it’s well-known. People are using its name casually, like, ‘When can I get my Opus?’ So I think there’s a potential for it to become a big part of life in Montreal and Quebec.”
Some commuters might require a bit more convincing. On a recent weekday morning, longtime métro rider Ben Hill was waiting for a train at McGill station.
“I haven’t heard the name Opus used very much,” he said. “And to be honest, to me, it only brings to mind Opus Dei, the religious organization.”
This article was originally published in the Montreal Gazette on June 2, 2008.
Tags: Metro, Montreal, Smart Cards
