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Who can market Birmingham best
Sep 8 2003
By Richard Warburton, Birmingham Post
As the job application was advertised yesterday for the new chief executive of Marketing Birmingham, The Birmingham Post's Richard Warburton discusses the future of the organisation responsible for promoting the city with chairman Bob Gilbert.
Bob Gilbert oozes enthusiasm for Birmingham. Born and bred in the city he is a walking, talking advert for everything it has to offer.
He is well aware of the city's shortfalls, but in his role as chairman of Marketing Birmingham he is all about promotion and nothing gets in his way as he rattles off the myriad changes to his homeland in the past ten years.
It is the pride he has for Birmingham and the effort he has put in to its renaissance during the past decade, as one of the driving forces behind Marketing Birmingham and its predecessor Birmingham Marketing Partnership, that has made recent criticisms of the organisation charged with promoting the city all the more hurtful.
There is little doubt that Mr Gilbert has taken the critique of out-going chief executive Dr John Heeley personally and believes they have been unfounded.
The joy and sense of fun he generates while talking about Birmingham's turnaround and "dynamic" future turns into a serious and thoughtful polemic as he considers a volley of negative comments that have been made about Dr Heeley's reluctance to stand in the spotlight.
"John is the strategic thinker that we needed," he said. "His predecessor was in the open mouth brigade and everyone thought that we didn't need any more of that and people seem to have forgotten that and there is a balance that needs to be struck.
"In the new chief executive, the appointments board will be looking for somebody who is not perhaps so introverted and as uncomfortable with dealing with the press as John apparently is. I don't think he is however. He just didn't think that was the major part of the job and I think the board would echo that.
"The board wanted someone who would sit down and work out what the city needed, how we were going to achieve it, how we were going to pay for it and that has all been laid down in our five year business plan."
Mr Gilbert is quick to point out that during the two years Dr Heeley was in his role he raised the organisation's budget from £2 million to £6 million and earned an economic turnover of £25 million as well as implementing a new IT infrastructure and launching the powerful "b in Birmingham " branding campaign.
A new £1.3 million Destination Management System, that will allow people to book hotel rooms in Birmingham from all over Europe, is also up and running, developed with European Regional Development Funding.
