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A brand new city?

Proud time: Commonwealth Games

MANCUNIANS with even a half-decent medium-term memory can be excused their sense of dejà vu. It's barely seven years since a group of the city's must successful young Turks locked horns with Marketing Manchester, the £3m agency charged with promoting Manchester around the world.

Battle raged over the slogan, "We're Up and Going", and the red, white and blue logo that Marketing Manchester chose to spearhead their sales pitch.

The opposition camp - comprising the likes of TV's Anthony Wilson and property tycoons Tom Bloxham and Carol Ainscow - slated the campaign as "dull, mediocre and worthy of a cycling proficiency badge". They called themselves the McEnroe Group and espoused the bad boy tennis player's famous put-down: "You cannot be serious."

The current approach, city council strategists insist, couldn't be more different.

Previously, the city's movers and shakers were summoned to the Bridgewater Hall and presented with Marketing Manchester's slogan as a fait accompli. But it was soon quietly kicked into the long grass.

Landmark: Imperial War Museum North

This time the exercise is being conducted with consultation "from the bottom up".

The opinions of the city's leading key-sector figures, from the arts to architecture and retail to restaurants - in addition to focus groups all over the city - are being sought before the launch of a three-year marketing strategy in December.

The aim goes far beyond Marketing Manchester's remit of attracting visitors. It covers issues of investment, development, transport, health, events, media, culture and sport. The strategy will comprise a "hymn sheet" from which all sectors can sing in unison about Manchester's image.

There is no sign yet of a snappy one-liner of a slogan - or a logo - and it's likely there won't be one. But the word "opportunity", which figured strongly in the report, was viewed as a core brand essence for the city.

People

What has emerged from extensive research is that Manchester's true identity has nothing to do with its geography or any particular landmark, but derives almost entirely from its people.

Hemisphere Design And Marketing Consultants, who did the research, say: "Manchester's attitude and edge has been behind many of its innovations, its music history, its appetite for fashion, its sense of humour and its belief that it can do things that can change the world.

"The bands that Manchester most values within its music history are not its most successful, but the ones that are credible, hip and generate respect.

"This can be seen in the city's tendency to invent and discover things, not just in culture but also in technology."

All this fuels a particularly Mancunian version of confidence which impacts on everything from the quality of developments and architecture to the content and direction of events and festivals - and the method chosen to develop an identity for the city.

The researchers quote one person who was consulted as saying: "You go to Manchester to do things, not to see things."

Manchester is credited with a sense of respect for the individual - "it's more of a mate than a mother" - and the idea that different people, different cultures and different ideas have a right to co-exist is deeply ingrained in the city's psyche.


What's your view? How do you think the city should be marketed? What is the brand of Manchester? Submit your comments below.

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