Southampton City Council (SCC) has come under fire for handing a lucrative contract to rebrand the city to a London agency, without giving local companies the chance to bid for the work.
After In Common discovered that SCC chose not to invest the £80,000 contract locally, or even put it out to tender, local business owners have criticised the wasted opportunity for the city and its people.
What’s more, the council made this decision despite having their own initiative to encourage local investment.
“Good things happen when you spend local,” declares the Southampton City Council website, celebrating the Southampton Pound, intended to encourage spending locally, including the idea that “money generated by Southampton’s economy should be retained within Southampton’s local economy.”
But, Southampton City Council handed the contract to rebrand the city to North Design, the London design agency responsible for the city’s logo in the unsuccessful City of Culture 2025 bid, rather than putting it out to tender and allowing local companies the chance to bid for the work.
The budget has been spent on a branding exercise which, most conspicuously, has resulted in widely criticized new ‘welcome’ signs appearing on roads into the city.
Local business-people have said it’s disappointing that the council missed the opportunity to invest locally and showcase the wealth of design talent in the region.
Martin Flavin, strategic creative director of Loveable, based in Southampton, said: “Without getting into the rights and wrongs of the project itself or my opinion on the branding, it seems incredibly strange to me, if your aim is to demonstrate that Southampton is a city of opportunity, not to give local creative businesses the opportunity to do the branding.
“There are loads of great local creatives who would’ve done a cracking job and, arguably, done it with a greater level of insight and knowledge of what makes the city great.”
James Golding, managing and creative director of Zap Creative, based in Hythe, said: “It’s frustrating that the council went straight to a London agency without letting local companies have a crack at it.
“You see the trend of people looking to London like it’s the upper echelon of talent. In reality, it’s people who have migrated there from places like Southampton. Their work isn’t inherently better.
“There’s a huge pool of talent in the region.”
He added that bigger agencies can often come with a higher price tag, whilst putting work out to tender can encourage companies to price themselves more competitively.
He added: “100% councils should be offering tenders to local companies. Local companies should have been able to give it their shot. Questions of value are doubly important when you’re in the public sector.”
Mark James (Allerton), director of Southampton’s Inkjet Media, local DJ and owner of Overdraft Records Store, said: “Eighty grand gone! This honestly feels like a slap in the face to every creative trying to make a living in this city, but also an insult to the people of Southampton in general.
“If the council doesn’t invest in local talent, they starve local businesses of opportunity and it creates this cycle of decline. This city needs to nurture its creative sector – not ship its budget off elsewhere.”
We asked the council why they chose to hand the work to a London company, when there was a rich opportunity in front of them to invest in a local business and showcase some of the huge array of talent on offer in the area, by at least allowing local firms the opportunity to pitch for the branding work.
They said: “We made the decision to use the same agency due to the substantial success of the UK City of Culture branding.”
They added that North Design has a strong track record and that the #SO branding and narrative, used in the unsuccessful bid, was successful, adding “it built on much of the consultation, engagement and research that had been undertaken as part of the bid with stakeholders which meant that they did not have to start from scratch.”
They also cited that the #SO ‘branding and narrative’ reached more than 1.15bn people and achieved an Advertising Equivalent Value of £18.6m i.e. the amount that would have to be spent to have the same reach and impact.
However, the relevance of these claims has been called into question.
An independent brand and marketing specialist, who asked not to be named, said: “ I would argue that the reach of the brand/logo was due to the City of Culture bid, which naturally attracted attention. It was the bid that drove the reach, not the brand/logo.”
They continued: “Is it really appropriate to assume that a brand developed in a hurry for a (failed) City of Culture bid is the best place to start when creating a brand for the city that will hopefully last for decades?”
Southampton City Council have also made much of having “secured excellent value for money” for the rebrand, presumably because much of the research had been done for the failed City of Culture bid, but it must be asked if that research was really suitable for a rebranding exercise or if better value, including fresh targeted research, could have been achieved by using a local firm.
Back in 2005, it was reported that The South East England Development Agency handed £100,000 to Southampton Council for a city branding push, “With the aim of making (Southampton) one of the most successful (cities) in the world by 2020”.
A council spokesperson said at the time: “A new brand will encourage inward investment, help us be competitive, encourage people to live and study here and make people proud of the city.”
It’s unclear what the outcome of that branding exercise was or how successful it was considered to be.
Given that very similar language has been used for the current exercise, it’s not clear how this new brand will achieve different results, and supply the city with a clear sense of identity, which it is, apparently, lacking. And can a rebrand really give a city an identity, or does that require greater investment in the place and the people?
The people of Southampton can only hope for the best.
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