Image & Identity- The X Factor for Business Success - Steve King, Partner, PKF


Well – I’ve drawn the short straw – going last and talking about the fluffy subject of Leicestershire’s image and identity.
How do I make something so fluffy a subject that will hold your attention for the next ten minutes?

Two words...… Wealth Creation.

My proposition is as follows: Leicestershire’s image and identity is NOT about PR campaigns, promotional activity or advertising.  It is about how we position the City of Leicester - and the surrounding county - to be the place where people want to spend their money.

Here’s another way of looking at it:  It’s about people from all around the world believing that, in Leicestershire, we have something that they might want – and their being prepared to pay us for it.

So what I want you to consider this morning is this:  What is Leicestershire and why would people buy into it?

I don’t think it’s that difficult to work out what people might want.  You have heard the previous speakers – an educated and skilled work force, great transportation, a first class IT infrastructure, an environment where enterprise thrives – somewhere where it is great to do business and easy to make money.

So let’s stop thinking about posters, PR campaigns and pork-pie tourism.  Let’s talk about how image and identity - the Leicestershire brand - is part of driving wealth creation.

For the avoidance of doubt:  A brand is not about a logo… it’s about doing business in a certain way.

Most of the corporates I deal with know that - driving all that they do - is their brand.  But we must not be talking about brand in isolation - rather, they are focussed on something a brand backed up by a quality product or service. Behind the brand there’s something they believe in… they believe in its strength and they’re passionate about it.  And that’s what we’re talking about here in Leicestershire.  Something with genuine substance.

Do we have something worthy of a brand?  If we do – are we smart enough to articulate what it is?
In other words, it’s not enough to have all those things that we might want, we have to know what they are, believe we HAVE got them ….. And other people have ALSO got to be persuaded that we have them.
The business case I want to make is that Leicestershire’s image and identity isn’t a fluffy accessory - a “nice to have” – it’s a fundamental component of our all round success.  And it isn’t about smoke and mirrors – it has to be real.  And then the message has to be received, understood and acted upon.

Sadly, when we talk of Leicestershire’s image and identity – we still tend to think of promotional campaigns to differentiate us from elsewhere.  We have to go beyond the marketing speak.
Let’s change the proposition ….. In Leicestershire we actually need to have something wonderful, ideally unique, something that people want.  And then we have to promote it.  And then we have to close the sale.

The problem is that we tend to look at bits of the issue in isolation.  I repeat: Our image or identity on its own is irrelevant.  It’s about how we marry the substance of what we are about as a County with the image and identity that sits alongside that.  It’s no good having an image and no substance - or come to that the substance without image. 

And let’s cut to the chase on this - if we join it all up and get it right in Leicestershire – we all have a better platform for creating wealth for ourselves.  It’s only when you marry all the different ingredients of Leicestershire together into something that is truly viable, has substance, and is attractive, that we will start to drive economic value - a place that people want to buy into. 

If only it were that easy!

Let’s now consider the facts:

Fact. Despite past efforts, few people outside of Leicestershire have much of an image of Leicester or the county - not in the same way that people have for Birmingham, Newcastle or Glasgow - Leicester simply doesn’t quite have that same sense of place.

Fact. We are our own worst enemy when it comes to the county’s image.  The people who live and work locally have not always been our greatest advocates.  There is a quiet pride in the things that Leicestershire does well … and a great capacity to complain about and knock the things that have gone badly.  Even if we had a great external image and a great external brand - if we don’t believe in what we’ve got, it will fail.

Fact. When an MD is thinking about relocating all or part of his business to Leicestershire, he or she is wondering about whether his or her family or employees will like the place.  Does it have the necessary feel-good factor?  Is it a fashionable place to be?  Does it have energy?  Is it forward looking?  Would you feel good about telling people you live in Leicestershire?  Is it a place you could love?

I hope you will agree that there is a lot to love about Leicestershire – but we also have a hell of a lot to improve.

As a friend of mine put it after a recent visit to Leicester – “Leicester has a reputational deficit.  It actually doesn’t matter how good what you have is.  If people think it’s crap, then it’s crap!”

So is the Leicestershire proposition any good?  If it is, are we selling the Leicestershire package well enough - both to people outside and inside the county?

Let’s think about this - Is Leicestershire a good brand?  Actually, do we really know what it is?  Is it sufficient to make people who live here feel proud of it?  Is there a brand that people outside of Leicestershire can be attracted to?

That’s part of the purpose of today’s workshops:  To start looking for some of the solutions and to inform the strategic debate about the county’s image and identity.

There’s also a subtext:  What must we do to hold the people responsible for managing our image and identity to account?  It’s the same with all the other areas of development in Leicestershire - the agencies behind them must be fully accountable too.  It is our money they’re spending - and it’s our businesses that are affected. I’d like to say a quick word about exactly ‘who’ we’re trying to win over in terms of selling our brand.  We seem to place a lot of emphasis on trying to attract new inward investors. Yes we get a handful of successes each year.  But there is a case that spending more to help our own indigenous businesses would lead to significantly larger levels of employment creation and expansion of our local economy. And promoting the Leicestershire brand to the people who live and work here might help our companies keep their best people from leaving to what they see as more attractive locations.  I think this applies to our graduates too. 

Echoing previous speakers, I too agree that we need bigger and bolder things going on in Leicestershire.  Initiatives like the Space Centre, the new Performing Arts Centre, city regeneration are examples of Leicestershire standing for “excellence”.

I agree too that our inability to join up what’s happening in the city with what’s happening in the county is our Achilles heel.  Politicians have got to work out a way of reconciling their differences or there will continue to be serious economic impacts.   The inane bickering undermines the city and the county’s credibility – and creates a climate of uncertainty for business.  This is particularly bad for companies that want to invest, who need to be working with some certainties, because there’s already enough risk in business without adding any more to it.

I’d like to finish with a few words on the Leicestershire Economic Strategy and why we need to pay it some attention.  We must not let this become a document prepared by the public sector to primarily meet public sector objectives.  It must be the wealth creators that that are instrumental and involved in driving the content for the Strategy.  If the business community fails to engage in putting together this Strategy document, we will end up with something we quite simply wouldn’t want to sign up to.  That doesn’t mean the wheels are going to come off our local economy.  But we will miss opportunities to do something more.  And that’s no good for anybody.  I think the challenge to the Leicester Shire Economic Partnership is to motivate the business community by spelling out the benefits of getting involved.

In conclusion, I think we can do things better.  We need to make sure that the people who are responsible for our image and identity do their job properly and do it well.  I think things could also be worse:  We could be having this meeting in Hull.

What would I count as success?  My mates down in London – or up in Nottingham – being envious of me because I live in Leicestershire.  What will I count as failure? Today? Your indifference. I urge you all to make a valuable contribution to the workshop debates.