Can a Manchester agency compete?

By , September 28 2010, 9:25 am 3 Comments

 

This weekend I was back in sunny Manchester  (yes – it really was sunny!) – my first time home since Xmas.

I spent the early part of my career up north– working for some really vibrant and creative PR and advertising agencies.

I loved working up there and was proud to fly the Mancunian flag.

Six years later though and I’m now totally embedded into the London communication scene.

Heading back up north this weekend, wandering round the city centre – one question went round my mind.

Can a Manchester consumer PR agency truly compete with London one?

This question was something I used to encounter when I worked in Manchester  – particularly when pitching and securing new clients.

I wondered if this was still the case.

I decided to ask a few leaders from the Manchester PR scene what they thought.

Suzy Glaskie, managing director at Peppermint PR, told me that: “the whole Manchester vs London argument is redundant.”

She added that “there are world-class consultancies in both cities, and different agencies have evolved particular expertise that will suit different clients – regardless of the location of either.”

Suzy believes Manchester has a dynamic and entrepreneurial community spirit, creative chutzpah and keen commercial edge.

Sandy Lindsay, from Tangerine PR, had a similar attitude.

She ‘did’ the London thing a few years ago – but soon “realised that location was totally irrelevant”. She took her “London clients” back up North where they are still working together “happily and profitably.”

Rather than trying to compete with London agencies – she is looking further afield – hoping that Manchester can one day compete with New York as the capital of Global PR.

So clearly the PR leaders up north are bullish.

You would, of course, expect them to be.

But maybe they have good reason.

The BBC is moving a significant amount of its operation to Manchester next year, which will place Manchester PR agencies closer to the national media than they have been for a long time.

There are a number of national and global brands who are headquartered outside of the capital.
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And with budgets being tightened across the board, the northern agencies may now offer a more cost efficient and leaner solution for clients looking to cut costs.

So maybe now is Manchester’s time to shine…?

What do you think?

 

 

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  • http://www.claremont.org.uk Ben Caspersz

    Interesting article. Thanks for sharing it, Adam

    As you say, it’s predictable that Manchester-based agencies would feel this way.

    It would be interesting to ask a cross section of agency clients for their views – particularly clients with national reach who are based in and around London.

    I suspect they would be less enthusiastic about travelling back and forth to Manchester or paying for Manchester agency staff to travel to meetings.

  • http://www.bdb.co.uk Olivia Kehoe

    Thanks for an interesting piece. As a b2b agency, we’re outside the remit of the article. But we can report that from our office near Manchester airport, we’re active in 25+ countries for multinational companies, and our location is largely irrelevant to our clients – as is the old north-south debate. Campaigns in all countries are handled by a single, multi-lingual team at BDB – so our clients benefit from the cost efficiencies of working with a one office agency.

    It will always be horses for courses with clients. Some will be drawn by the perceived thrills and bills of a London agency, while others look for genuine expertise, creativity and value for money.

  • Rebecca Dickinson

    I moved up from London to Manchester nearly one year ago and have not looked back.

    Read my blog about ‘Live as a southerner up north’

    Living in the north
    It is just over one year now that I decided to make the move from Clapham in south west London to the north of England, leaving behind the stress of the capital and settling in the vibrant city of Manchester, with an abundance of shops and bars to rival that of my former home.
    When I first moved to London, after graduating from Sheffield University, I was thrown into the buzz of the city, amongst friends I had grown up with, I loved the freedom I had and relished at being a stone’s throw away from a multitude of fun. Much like many people living in the south of England, I too thought that life was better in the big smoke, offering superior career opportunities and a more vivacious existence. However, keen to change professions and move into PR after redundancy in the financial industry, and with university friends dotted across the city, I decided that Manchester may just have more appeal.
    Manchester Life
    What I had never realised before moving here, was that the Manchester PR industry is bursting with fantastic opportunities. I work at Tangerine PR – which has just been shortlisted for nine CIPR awards and earlier this year was also a final contender for the national award for outstanding PR agency. Tangerine PR is just one of the many outstanding agencies with a list of awards and accolades to challenge all London based institutions. I therefore began to see a completely new side to the eclectic city.
    With many students heading to Manchester for the new term, it got me thinking about the number of southerners who choose to head up north to study, to sample the ‘real’ university experience. Speaking to my sister, who has just started her second year at MMU in marketing and brand management, she told me that the pulls to the city of Manchester included, ‘the vibrant nightlife’, ‘chilled out atmosphere’, and ‘cheaper lifestyle’. Just like me, she saw university as a time to move away from Kent and London to find out for herself if northerners really are more friendly than southerners and if life north of Watford, really is different.
    But with all this talent coming into the city, what are businesses doing to retain it? One thing different from London is that Manchester tries to keep hold of its talented people and show them the ‘northern way’. Our client, homes4u, offered students who signed up to selected tenancy agreements, an array of house warming gifts to choose from, including Xbox 360s, Nintendo Wiis, 22″ LCD TVs, iPod Nanos, Docking stations, or alternatively £150 to spend at Sainsbury’s. What a perfect moving in gift, showing one company’s efforts to go that little step further to look after its customers.
    Always keen to retain key university talent, Tangerine PR and MMU run a programme called Manchester Masters, which offers a unique opportunity for 10 graduates from Greater Manchester universities to work in marketing-related roles over the course of a year. Funded by Manchester City Council, MWRA and NESTA, the scheme provides a free Masters degree, rent-free city centre accommodation, free public transport, and a business mentor. Currently in its second year, Tangerine’s project has successfully retained some of the UK’s best students, providing businesses in Manchester with outstanding employees, and is just one of the shortlisted entries at the North West CIPR awards.
    So one year on do I still pang for life in the capital? There will always be a part of me that misses the London life, being surrounded by family and all that is familiar to me from growing up in the vicinity. However, Manchester has offered me a new existence, one where I am not left battling for a space on the underground, a life based in the city centre with all on my doorstep, one where I can walk to work, and a place I can firmly call home.
    To anyone wary of moving up north, you can rest assured that life is not that dissimilar. Yes there may be a few differences in pronunciation, and opinions on the best football teams in the Premier League, but the day to day existence, quality of life and outlook on society is pretty much the same and certainly my experience dispels the ideology that life is ‘grim up north’.