Posts Tagged ‘ marketing ’

Why Birmingham needs a Creative Director – the problem they could solve

Over on Created in Birmingham there’s a healthy discussion around the Creative City Awards, and it’s indicative of a growing disquiet that can be heard particularly in the ‘creative’ sector. But I don’t just think it’s “arty types not understanding the real issues” – it might just be because people whose work is creative have the vocabulary to express disappointment in the poor understanding of design, art and the living environment that the council seem to display. There’s a problem with marketing, we live in an age where bullshit is sniffed ever more easily. Bloggers, press are much more capable of crying foul on the fluff that comes out of people’s mouths and PR departments. If you claim that “the Creative City Awards received over 40 submission entries, which is a great testament to the strength and depth of creative business in the city” then people are going to know and tell that there are 3,433 companies (2004 figures) and 25,925 creative workers city (2005 figure) and somehow “over 40″ doesn’t sound so good. The council, and other bodies that follow their lead, won’t hold off on their desire to paint the “everything is brilliant” picture. They extend the...

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Global city, local arse?

One of the most thought provoking blog posts on the new Birmingham Post site is one from Pete Ashton, on “our”, marketing phrase “global city with a local heart”.  ”I’m not sure “local” is the right word for that though. “Healthy heart” maybe but the locality of the organ seems pretty irrelevant if its arteries are clogged with gunk.” It’s the sort of thing I’ve missed from Pete since his Brum Blog became his gig guide and well worth a read.

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Bring your felt-tips

To Colour in Birmingham. A couple of quite spammy reading comments from a first time commenter lead me to this -  a sort of viral calender with very mainstream Brum events. Commits the cardinal usability sin of opening a new window it can resize.

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Capital by capitailisation

Capital by capitailisation

London has been LONDON for some time now – because it’s always ON, you see (can’t think of anything worse) and now ‘the magic city’ (Birmingham, Alabama) has become BIRMINGHAM for marketing purposes (because it’s IN – fashionable I suppose). So what can we do? How about: Because of our overacting actors, our love of pork products, or our amateur radio enthusiasts? Because of our ‘being something your mum would buy for you to wear’ – according to the other half “birmo” (bermo?) is a North-Walesian insult meaning just that. Because of our love of Bernard Ingham? Or, <snaps, fingers then does the ‘give us a clue’ nose point> How about we promote a certain type of goatee? Not easy this branding malarky.

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BiNS is mostly by Jon Bounds a Birmingham based social web consultant, producer and writer., You can hire him to work on your social web campaigns or anything really—he's not fussy. Follow him on twitter or drop him an email.

There's also the odd bit of stuff from Danny Smith.

Feel free to send us anything you're interested in - or think we might be.

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