Brand the Place not the Vehicle

One of my first jobs in economic development was as a marketing executive for Manchester’s Trafford Park Development Corporation in the 1990s. I remember being told in uncertain terms that we should never put the Corporation’s name on a banner, brochure or a giveaway pen. It was always the place, not the organisation. The Corporation was just a means to an end, a time-limited vehicle that would soon be gone. The place would always be here.

With so much chopping and changing in economic development structures, this advice is still so relevant 30 years on.

So it was sad, but expected, to read today about the end of funding for the Midlands Engine initiative in the UK. This was an economic development organisation that did much good work to promote investment opportunities across the Midlands (that ill-defined region across the centre of England encapsulating Birmingham, Coventry, Nottingham, Leicester, Derby etc).

I was never a great fan of the name, it worked in a few circumstances but was awkward in others and ultimately fell into the trap of promoting the vehicle not the place. Millions of pounds have been spent on marketing initiatives that have been heavily branded ‘Midlands Engine’ similarly with its neighbour the ‘Northern Powerhouse’, rather than building on the great city and county brands that sit under these clumsy and imposed pan-regional umbrellas.

The Midlands Engine brand always gave me the impression of an engineering company in Dudley (only slightly better than ‘Northern Powerhouse’ sounding like a nightclub in Pontefract!). Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle, Liverpool… these are global place brands and we shouldn’t be hiding them under a layer of Whitehall-conceived fluff.

As we enter the next chapter of local government tinkering, hopefully we can remember that our historic counties and cities will still be here in 100 years, when the Mayoral Combined Authorities are confined to the footnotes of economic development history alongside Urban Development Corporations, Regional Development Agencies and Local Enterprise Partnerships.

Promote your place. Not your vehicle.