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Northern Business
BBC News - Row over live it love it brand
The BBC story
about the Leeds, Live it, Love it brand is now out with a quote from me
and Councillor Keith Wakefield. There is a response from Tony Stanton,
CEO of An Agency Called England (formally known as Mediaworks).
And I'm sorry but Marketing Leeds CEO Kevin Johnson's claim that "the
cost of developing the Live it Love it brand was zero, but the
research, printing and launch show had so far cost £150,000" just
doesn't add-up. The term 'research' can cover a multitude of sins and
no PR company or agency works for nothing.
In my professional experience the two most expensive elements of
developing a brand are the research and the implementation (producing
new stationery, signs, vehicle livery etc). Also a £150,000 for print
and the launch show sounds expensive. That's a hell of a lot of print.
Tony Stanton, the chief executive of An Agency Called
England said he had come up with the 'Live it Love it' idea completely
independently and only in the process of due diligence did he find it
had been used elsewhere.
Tony is no doubt right that they came up with the idea completely
independently but the bit that doesn't add up is the "in the process of
due dilligence". That is the sort of the marketing bullshit that is
used all the time by PR and marketing people. I know, I admit to having
done it myself. It makes you sound like a lawyer and you hope it makes
you seem more professional. After all due dilligence is what lawyers do
for you when closing a deal.
It wouldn't sound so impressive if you said "I typed a couple of words
into Google and this is what I found". But that's all it takes to find
out just how many times the phrase has already been used in place
marketing and branding.
I don't like critiscising fellow professionals in my home town (and my
comments certainly aren't directed to the people on the board of
Marketing Leeds, some of who I know and have respect for) but feel I
have to do it for two reasons:
1) Leeds has some worldclass businesses, universities, organisations and people. They all deserve better than this.
2) As well as running a Leeds-based PR company I am also an elected
city councillor and have a duty to the people of Leeds to ensure that
their money is spent as effectively as possible. I remain to be
convinced.
I'm cross posting this to my councillor blog and would like to invite
any of those involved to visit one of the two sites and use the
comments to respond to some of the critiscism from myself and lots of
others. Over to you.
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Leeds, Live it, Love it - the saga continues
I've just spoken to a journalist from the BBC who is researching a
story about the Leeds, Live it, Love it fiasco. This prompted me to do
a little more research on the ... "live it, love it" slogan. And a very
popular one it appears to be. Not only is it the slogan of Hong Kong's
international award winning tourism campaign but also:
> The home page of Experience Nottinghamshire says "So live it, love it and discover Nottinghamshire today"
> The owner of liveitloveit.com is Visit Scotland
> or Auckland Regional Council's Big Clean Up campaign
> or via Cafe Press you can even buy Live it, Love it t-shirts
So I guess this means that Marketing Leeds isn't going to succeed in a trademark application.
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Leeds, Live it, Love it - it gets worse
Yesterday I commented on how dire the new Leeds branding initiative is. It
gets worse. Tonight's Yorkshire Evening Post contains some letters critiscising
the brand.
The first points out that exactly the same slogan "Leeds, Live it, Love it"
had already been used by "Hong Kong, Live it, Love it". A quick Google search
led me to the official Hong Kong tourist board site.
I then thought I'd try a quick search
on "Leeds, Live it, Love it" and guess what? The top entry is the Leeds Initiative website. The second
is yesterday's post on this blog. Even worse is the fact that the Leeds
Initiative site has a clear link to the official Leeds, Live it, Love it web site, which is more than the official Marketing Leeds site does. It still just features the logo and says "
We will soon be launching our consumer-focused websites...".
It seems that it's not just me and some YEP readers who aren't
impressed. As a councillor I received an email alerting me to this post on the Leeds Kerbside blog.
This is more than just sad. Some of us really do live in and love Leeds
and just wish people who are being paid respectable fees and salaries
to do a job would do it a bit better.
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Leeds, Live it, Love it. Loathe it.
I really wanted to be positive about the work of Marketing Leeds. However, I'm struggling to think of anything positive to say about it.
Most of the pieces seem to be there, just. But it's the implementation
that is so sloppy. Where is the innovation? Where is the proof that
Leeds leads?
It's the sort of thing that if it had happened in the 90s you would
have thought "Wow, great stuff". In 2005 it is just so not there.
Where do you start? My first thought was I'll back the campaign and start by putting the logo on my councillor blog, my PR blog and my company website. A good bit of viral marketing support.
Well actually no I won't because they don't want anyone to! The draconian brand guidelines
(sorry but all they have is a PDF of a CD case cover) start off well
saying "The Leeds brand will be adopted throughout the city by
residents, visitors, students, businesses or commuters. It will be used [my emphasis]
by anyone promoting the city as an endorsement on marketing material."
So far, so good. However, it goes on to say "For authorisation to use
the Leeds brand on your marketing material please contact Marketing
Leeds on 0113 214 5200". Can you seriously expect many people to jump
through this hoop, especially "visitors"? And maybe it would be polite
if they asked people to back the campaign rather than dictating that
they "will" do so.
Compare this with the much more
intelligent and open approach of the London 2012
Olympic bid which provided a simple script to include the logo on your
website, and cleverly automatically updated it to say Thank You.
The online press room
(because they aren't interested in broadcast or online coverage?) looks
like something from the dawn of the internet era and insists on
providing its scant amount of facts and figures as PDF downloads. The
photo library looks pretty bare to begin with, but on searching for
"solicitor" (having failed on legal, law and lawyer) I get a picture of
KPMG's office - which last time I heard was still an accountants! The
"Contact us" simply opens an email, with no phone number to help a
journalist on an urgent deadline. And as for anything even vaguely 21st
century such as RSS feeds, then forget it.
Looking at this dog's dinner you would never guess that Leeds is one of the UK's premier media and technology centres.
I then visited the Leeds Champions
website which actually turned out to be just part of the main Marketing
Leeds site and consisted mainly of a price list to become a champion.
I'd naively hoped we'd get something innovative such as a group blog by
the champions telling us why they "Leeds, Live it, Love it".
I really didn't intend to be so negative but you can only judge by what
you see and so far that it very poor and is an insult to the fantastic
businesses, universities and people that we've got in Leeds.
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Yorkshire Forward's news releases
I'm not sure I understand Yorkshire Forward's rationale for using the M2 Newswire. It's just put out a news release about the appointment of a new executive director of business. The strange thing is this story has already appeared as an "exclusive" in last Tuesday's Yorkshire Post Business Week supplement. It was logical to give David Parkin (business editor at the Yorkshire Post) the exclusive but then why wait three days to put it out on the wire. It's hardly hot news anymore at that point.
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Leeds, Leeds, Leeds - "Almost perfect reflection of British zeitgeist"
The Guardian reveals new Lonely Planet guide to Britain is just the latest in a long line of publications to laud Leeds.
Leeds has been hailed as the shopping capital of the north and "Britain's Barcelona" ever since Harvey Nichols opened there. The store celebrates its 10th anniversary in Yorkshire next year. The book says: "From cutting edge couture to contemporary cuisine, Leeds will hand it to you in a stylishly designed bag or serve it on a fancy plate."
Ian McMillan, Barnsley football club's poet-in-residence, welcomed the guide's verdict, but said it was a bit behind the times: "It's a cliche that it's grim up north. It's not been grim up north since they did away with industry in 1984.
"Leeds is full of footballers shopping in Harvey Nichols, Sheffield is full of men in hard hats building things and Barnsley is the new Tuscany."
Don Stewart, executive director of Yorkshire Forward, the economic development agency for the region, said: "If you surveyed Londoners about Leeds there's a good chance you'd get flat caps, doilies and Michael Parkinson. But the economy here has changed. It's loft apartments and people with big disposable incomes. It takes time to change that perception."
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Cumbria Woodlands media relations programme
PR Week reports that Cumbria Woodlands has begun a media relations programme to raise awareness of its windblow recovery strategy. This is of relevance to Bruce Marshall Associates' client GBA, an environmental and woodland management consultancy based in West Cumbria.
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