LIVERPOOL City Region is adopting a new approach to the marketing of its unique and diverse assets to accelerate growth and job creation in its economy.
Agreement has been reached in principle for Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and its key stakeholders to create and implement a framework for a Place Marketing Strategy for the City Region with the potential to attract initial funding worth £2m.
Under proposals agreed by the LEP Board, Liverpool Vision’s new Marketing Liverpool body will have responsibility for the planned Place Marketing activity, and will ensure major global opportunities such as the International Festival for Business 2014 offer maximum economic return for the entire City Region.
The LEP Board retains its overall responsibility for the strategic development of the City Region Visitor Economy (VE), and other Key Growth Sectors, with responsibility for marketing the destination being undertaken by the new Marketing Liverpool unit. It is intended that the LEP and its Partners will commission Marketing Liverpool to deliver a range of activities to promote the City Region with Liverpool as the agreed attack brand.
The agreement is also likely to see the creation of a Marketing Board for the City Region, accountable to the main Board of the LEP. Negotiation of the various agreements will commence immediately.
LEP Chair Robert Hough says: “The need for a broad City Region marketing strategy has been widely recognised. This agreement results from detailed discussions over how existing structures and delivery mechanisms can be remodelled to eliminate duplication of effort and provide clarity in the market place.”
He added: “The creation of the new Marketing Liverpool body within Liverpool Vision allows the LEP and its Partners, to commission delivery of a range of marketing activities required to maximise the potential we have identified for growth in the Key Sectors of our economy by promoting the City Region as a great place to live, work, invest, study and visit.”
Mayor and LEP Board Member Joe Anderson said:“We have achieved a lot in a short space of time and our ambition for Liverpool grows with each success and with this agreement Marketing Liverpool has a mandate to think of the best ways to promote the world class Liverpool brand more effectively to compete on the world stage.”
Liverpool Vision Chief Executive Max Steinberg said: “This decision provides us with an opportunity through Marketing Liverpool to promote our offer to both national and international markets.
“The key to this will be creating effective private and public sector partnership arrangements to ensure that, under the one umbrella of Marketing Liverpool, we can promote ourselves through a combination of our new and traditional strengths and assets.”
The functions to be delivered under the proposed agreement include:
Management of the Visit Liverpool Website and associated activity
Overseas and domestic marketing
Events and Festivals Marketing
Convention Bureau activity
Membership activity including sales and recruitment
The LEP Board has agreed that a Service Level Agreement between the LEP and Marketing Liverpool will set out the new roles and responsibilities of each party. This proposed Agreement will run for up to two years. A private sector LEP Board Member, Jeanette Kehoe-Perkinson, has been appointed chair of a Management Implementation Group to agree and oversee the roll-out of the new structure. It is envisaged that this group will evolve into a Marketing Board for Liverpool City Region which will report to, and be monitored by, the main LEP Board.
The agreement will provide for existing LEP employees to be seconded to Marketing Liverpool. The LEP team has extensive knowledge and experience of successful destination marketing and has delivered international and national campaigns across a range of media.
Liverpool City Region LEP is the only body of its kind in the country with a Membership base. This includes almost 400 businesses and other bodies active in the Visitor Economy who pay membership fees to fund activity.
The new agreement allows for financial contributions from Visitor Economy partners to continue to remain in the LEP with appropriate resources then devolved to Marketing Liverpool in line with an agreed Delivery schedule of activity. No other VE membership arrangement will be created during the term of the agreement.
Liverpool City Region Visitor Economy Committee (VEC) Acting Chair Michael Eakin, Chief Executive of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, said: “The Visitor Economy is one of Liverpool City Region’s greatest strengths and of profound importance to our economy. As a sector, we have the talent, the assets and the ambition. We hope that the new arrangements will help ensure we all work together in a unified way, making the most of our resources, to fulfil our shared aim to grow the sector still further for the benefit of the whole city. The VEC will be working closely within the process to ensure the interests of the sector are fully reflected in the new structure.”
A Member of the VEC will join the Management Implementation Group, and the Committee will discuss the proposal at a special meeting on 29 January.
The LEP is currently bidding for a £2m allocation of European funds to be allocated to Place Marketing activity for the City Region. If successful, it is envisaged that monies from this fund will be put towards initial activity commissioned from Marketing Liverpool.