O’Conall Street

Belfast’s latest brand was launched yesterday and the local papers today are full of a pretty girl with pretty a ’B’ to illustrate the event.

I was involved in the reference group which was consulted on the development of the new brand and am happy with the results but like all brands the logo is simply the tip of the iceberg. What matters is the proposition on which it is build, whether it fits the product - in this case Belfast city, and whether it is capable of being understood and adopted by the target audiences. City Brands are difficult to get right because they have to appeal to visitors and residents alike. The biggest risk is local rejection fueled by cynicism and a popular view that it is all about a logo which cost too much.

As a reference group we worked hard and long to develop a brand based on core elements.  These have been formally expressed in the brand guidelines as follows:

Brand essence
This is Belfast’s moment.

Brand proposition
A unique history and a future full of promise have come together to create a city bursting with energy and optimism.

Brand identity
Through application of this new identity, the energy and optimism of the city is brought to life. The logo acts as the heart of Belfast – reflecting the warm and welcoming nature of the city. The capital ‘B’ of the logo puts Belfast on the map. It highlights that this is Belfast’s moment by using the ‘B’ as a call to action, as in ‘be here now’.

What this means to key audiences is what is called the brand experience and so we settled on the following:

For citizens…
The time is right for us to build a thriving, vibrant city. Bringing together our strong sense of identity, our resilience and enterprise, and our renowned warmth and wit, we are seizing this opportunity with both hands. Proud of our heritage, we embrace the future to build an even better Belfast, providing a warm welcome to visitors, an exciting environment for business and a great place to live.

For visitors…
Here, between the mountains and the sea, is a dynamic city with a big personality. Proud of its heritage Belfast is alive with possibilities and open to change – vibrant, energetic and exciting. The people of Belfast provide a welcome which is not just warm, but genuine and generous, inviting anyone and everyone to join in. Belfast provides a vivid and memorable experience with new things to discover every time you visit.

For investors…
Belfast is a vibrant city full of opportunity. A spirit of optimism and a real sense of purpose fills the air, inspiring enterprise, creativity and change. The people of Belfast – witty, lively, welcoming and determined – are proud of the city’s past, positive about its future, and ready and able to seize the opportunities on offer. Now is the time, and Belfast is the place, where anything is possible. 

As I said, today’s papers are full of pretty pictures. They get the message across that there is a new brand in town but do not in any way explain the proposition or bring the brand to life in a meaningful way. The City Council faces a significant challenge to ensure buy in from key stakeholders and the business community although in their defence the work on this is already underway. The bigger and more daunting task is to secure public acceptance and adoption. That will take a lot more then a photo and a short press release.

The opportunities to use digital and social media to bring the new brand to life are immense I will be watching with interest to see if City Hall adopt them.

Irish News day on O’Conall Street.

Ireland’s reputation damaged by Lisbon no

Many of us will be packing our bags and heading for drier and sunnier parts of the European Union this summer. Don’t be surprised if a local or fellow tourist gives you an ear full when you tell them you are Irish. The fact is the national reputation, (the vast majority of our continental cousins are not for distinguishing between North and South), is in the gutter. Ireland, once everyone’s favourite member state is now the problem spoilt child, rich thanks to Europe, yet now turning its back on it.

We can trace the ‘yes’ campaign’s failure to poor communications and above all a fractured and unconvincing messaging. The ‘no’ campaign may have been an eclectic coalition of right wing libertarians, highly nationalistic republicans and a small number of very conservative and committed religious types, but they did succeed in casting enough doubt in the electorate’s mind to turn very many ‘don’t know’ voters into ‘no’ voters.

The second communications lesson is that reputation matters to a country and what goes on inside its borders can damage standing beyond them.

Eurobarometer, the European research body, carried out exit polls which found support for the no campaign highest amongst non-skilled workers, those out of work and students. Women also rejected the treaty by a much higher margin then men. These were the very same people who returned Bertie Ahern to power at the last election.

The tragedy of the outcome is that the Lisbon Treaty strengthens the opportunities for small member states to exercise real influence and it allows for member states to protect key areas of national importance, particularly those laws based on a national moral consensus, like abortion for example. The other irony is that it improves the business opportunities in the EU and does not threaten Ireland’s fiscal regime – a message which some in the business community (which voted yes) appears to have accepted during the campaign.

Andy Pollak, the Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies, pointed out last week that the result is bad for the island of Ireland as a whole. He points to the 446,000 people in Northern Ireland and the Irish Border Region who have benefited from EU funded projects in the past decade, with nearly 90,000 gaining qualifications and over 22,000 engaging in reconciliation activities. Yet these constituencies returned some of the largest no votes.

Invest Northern Ireland chairman, Stephen Kingon, told a conference recently of the plethora of North/South business bodies and initiatives that have sprung up to help make the island of Ireland more competitive internationally. These include InterTradeIreland, the IBEC-CBI Joint Business Council (funded by the EU), the North/South Roundtable Group, the North/South Business Enterprise Group, joint North-South trade missions and the cross-border financial services initiative announced in April by Peter Robinson and Brian Cowen. All operating within a framework for cross border cooperation made possible by the EU.

Where to from here then?

I think there is little doubt the Irish government will be asked to hold another referendum, probably before the European elections next June. The question is how do they ensure they set the agenda?

The answer is simple – they need to ask a question that allows the electorate to focus on the big picture. In other words does Ireland want to be a full partner or a semi detached member of the EU?

In Northern Ireland we need the EU more than we may realise. On this island we can little afford to remove ourselves from a project which has been so good for us. Globally the need for a strong European voice on issues like human rights, the environment and security has never been greater.

Fearghal O’Boyle, a friend of mine from Donegal left an incisive comment on my blog when I posted on this issue last week. I’ll give him the last word:

“Down in my local on Sunday watching Armagh and Cavan, the usual loudmouth was going on about how great a result the No vote was, a usually quieter denzien looked up from his paper and said he had voted Yes. ‘Why?’ roared the loudmouthed patriot, The Quiet Man looked him cooly in the eye, with perhaps a hint of pity for his neighbour, ‘Because this is no time to be messing about.’

How right he was.”

Today is business supplement day in the Belfast Telegraph. Traditionally seen as the North’s business paper, many clients rate a mention in the Tele’s weekly supplement above the Irish News or the Newsletter, although this is changing.

Over the past decade the Northern dailies have built up their business coverage and can boast some depth. The Irish News now has three full time journalists and the Newsletter two. Both produce a weekly supplement like the Tele and the Irish News is increasingly finding breath in its daily reportage.  Strange then when I heard that the Bel Tel has no plans to replace its vacant business business editor post, leaving just one full time journalist on the business desk. Five years ago the same desk boasted four full time reporters.

This is a move which many in the business community will find hard to understand. There has never been more demand for quality business reporting and never has the opportunity been greater for sound analysis and investigative work in the world of commerce. It is widely known that the belts have been tightened at the Tele and syndicated work is getting more and more space on its pages. That said at a time when the private sector is showing real potential, energy has never been more front of mind and the all island economy is a reality it seems a little strange to be relegating the business desk in this way.  

The smoking ban is now well established across these islands yet there seems to be little drop in the numbers who remain addicted to the infamous weed.

 Josh Gilbert,a New York colleague and source of many a good blog picked up on an interesting New York Times story on this issue last week. 

The NYT covers a study to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine that finds there is a significant social factor at work in kicking the habit. It follows an earlier paper by the same authors that determined there was also a big social factor in weight loss.

According to Josh the research points to the enormous opportunity in healthcare communications to more and more create programs that defeat isolation, encourage participation, build community, and don’t just educate patients about treatment therapies but help improve health outcomes through facilitating advocacy.

The application of complex adaptive networks is becoming more popular amongst communications specialists and is driving our business proposition here at Weber Shandwick.

There is a big hole in the Republic’s public finances this morning. It’s €8billion big and that is just in the tax shortfall.

Meanwhile Dublin based Davy Stockbrokers are cutting their forecast for the Irish economy because conditions continue to get worse for consumers, as the labour market weakens it is harder to get credit, and because of a ‘negative wealth effect’.

Davy now expects GNP growth of 1% this year, and for 2009 of 2%, down from a previous forecast of 3.4%. On housing, Davy does not think 2008 will see building bottom out, but it has hugely reduced the number of house completions it expects to see next year - from 40,000 to 25,000.  It says house prices will fall by 10.7% over the next year, and by 7.2% in 2009.  It also forecasts that non-residential building will fall by 10% next year. The Dublin stockbroker says unemployment will have reached 7% by the end of next year from a current level of 5.5%.

One good piece of news came out of this island last night though. A treaty banning cluster bombs was also signed in the fair city after the British government backed down to internal and external pressure and agreed to a total ban. It’s not often you get to demonstrate the value of local representation at Westminster yet for the past month a forceful campaign led by Mark Durkan MP of the SDLP has ensured this island’s opposition to these hideous weapons was heard loud and clear in every forum available to our public representatives. Advocacy in action me thinks.

Over 100 international business leaders are tucking into the Ulster Fry this morning preparing for the big investment conference. The day got off to a good start in Weber Shandwick with two of our global clients’ CEOs leading the Good Morning Ulster interviews. Nortel and All State are examples of companies which invested in the North some time ago and are happy to stay on.

Of course as economy Minister, Nigel Dodds, said the elephant in the room remains the uncompetitive rate of corporation tax in NI versus the Republic. It would help greatly if the British government acknowledged this by granting a preferential rate to NI. In the meantime there is plenty the North can offer in terms of economic advantage.

There is an interesting report in today’s Belfast Telegraph on the relative cost of living in Belfast and Dublin. Mercer Consulting in their annual survey of major cities found that Belfast is 40% cheaper than Dublin which is rapidly becoming  very, very expensive place to live. This is something potential investors will note and could well mitigate the tax differentials between the two jurisdictions.

Watched the Apprentice last night. I hope our VIP visitors gave it a miss. All those qualifications and not an ounce of intelligence between them. Maybe I’m getting old and cranky but you would expect a bunch of super dooper graduates to know what kosher chicken was. Me thinks a little less time in front of the mirror and little more with their face in a book would be a good start.

Great to see Brian Lenihan promoted to Finance Minister. He is a class act and deserving of promotion. It will be interesting to watch this legal eagle with serious government pedigree navigate his way through a very challenge brief.

Off to do some work now.  

You hear me go on a lot about the shift from traditional public relations to advocacy. We have been tracking this global shift in Weber Shandwick for a couple of year and last week we launched some European research on the topic.

Richard Moss a fellow Weber Shandwck Director in Europe and the man responsible for the research gave an interview to PR Week TV which you may find interesting. More as always on this blog and from Weber Shandwick.

I am one of a growing number of senior Weber Shandwick staff globally who blog on a plethora of issues and interests.

It is striking how few of the other leading communications groups have the same footprint in cyberspace. Maybe they are waiting to see how the digital and social media revolution pans out or maybe they have nothing to say.

As part of the occasional series of O’Conall Street signposts I wanted to highlight three newish blogs which are worth checking out. A scroll down the blogroll to your right will bring you to the rest.

 CandidCulture offers a unique insight into the world of multicultural communications. It’s pacey and written from a slightly left of field perspective. Good craic as well as a good read.

 MayDayMayDay is a clarion call to anyone genuinely interested in sustainability and the role business has in ensuring our children and their children have a planet to enjoy.

 All About Advocacy does what it says on the tin.  A good read for anyone genuinely interested in the changing world of public relations and integrated communications.

Byrne Baby Byrne’s twitter for those of you who enjoy a twitt and if you would like a taste of China give Sino Scott your click.

The integration of blogs, social networking platforms and the rest of the Internet has been possible for some time but for an ordinary techno Joe like me it is only in recent months that the opportunities have become apparent.

 A good friend sent me a link to a BBC news story last week about the growth of facebook since its establishment less then four years ago. In the UK alone there are 7 million and worldwide over 50 million. No wonder advertisers are circling with serious intent.

From a PR perspective the opportunities are also endless. Social networking sites allow you to create groups such as the one Belfast fashionista Cathy Martin has now got for her increasingly successful Belfast Fashion Week. These cost you nothing and ensure all members are updated everytime they log on.

 For those with more resource, like Barack Oabama, there is the opportunity to create an application which people can download onto their own sites and here is where it gets exciting. The application can be passed throughout a growing the community of interest and ensures the user is constantly up to date with news, video and pretty much anything else its developer wants them to see. From a campaigning point of view this means your YouTube Channel, blog, myspace presence, technorati rating and news as well as the main website are now integrated. The opportunities are endless.

London is street for street my favourite city in the world.

Spent most of Thursday and Friday there meeting clients and attending Weber Shandwick’s quarterly UK and Ireland Leadership meeting. This eclectic group runs some of the most successful and interesting communications businesses on these islands. Everything thing from hard core Public Affairs, Corporate and Financial Communications to one of the biggest consumer teams around. And flanking the London battalions is the strongest regional network on these islands as well as a series of specialist practices which are right at the cutting edge. SLAM is already redefining youth marketing and our broadcast and social and emerging media teams are pushing the boundaries of what is better known and digital communications. We are also ahead of the curve on multicultural communications. I can see opportunities for this product here in Ireland soon given our fast growing and increasingly affluent immigrant population.

With carbon offsetting and sustainability increasingly on the business agenda Planet2050 has become well established in a very short space of time as the place to go if you need serious advice about corporate responsibility. And there are bloggers in our midst. Check out the following to get inside a group that lives 21st century communications. ByrneBabyByrne, JamesWarren, Prop-arazzi, MayDayMayDayMayDay or WordofMoss.

So a good meeting but the icing on the cake was playing Lastminute.com for all its worth. I’ve become quite adept at shopping for a hotel room using them. This week I took a punt on the ’secret deal’ and got myself into the Hilton Park Lane for the price of a modest three star room. Eighteen floors up and with views east to Westminster, the London Eye and the City….. Not the worst wake up vista in the world.