Posts in consecutive days! A new record for me.
Yesterday’s post got me thinking further about the debate around the branding of Birmingham. The city is actually lucky. It has a lot of positives and a lot going for it. Definitely not perfect, but certainly enough there for a decent brand.
It got me thinking, what about other places. Lets say, how easy would it be to brand the city of Stoke-on-Trent?
Ok, so the Stoke area does already have the brand of being the Potteries, but I mean the city.
Stoke-on-Trent was consituted by the bringing together of six towns (Stoke, Hanley, Burslem. Tunstall, Longton, and Fenton) and in that lies one of its problem. It has a lack of identity. Actually in the centre of Stoke itself there is very little, mainly just the railway station and the Council administrative offices (and plus a very decent sports outlet, Bourne sports). It’s commercial centre is in Hanley. Or really should I say retail centre rather than commercial centre.
That’s another of Stoke’s problems, now with the demise of the coal, steel and gradually the pottery industries, there is little industry driving the commercial sector forward. (There is only one top ten accountancy firm in Stoke and the largest legal firm is based in neighbouring Newcastle-upon-Lyme). Other than the obvious pottery names like Wedgwood and Royal Doulton the only other big business names from the area are Bet365 and Phone4U. However it would be amiss of me to say that people aren’t working very hard to rectify this. But it is a long process when you have had the industrial heart ripped-out and it not replaced.
So how to go about branding Stoke-on-Trent? Who knows, that is up to others and not me. However, following on from yesterday’s final comment it does seem to have a couple of slight advantages over Birmingham in relation to personalities and sport.
It is well known that Robbie Williams is from the city (Burslem to be precise) and there is Nick Hancock, Anthea Turner and Bruno Brooks to challenge Birmingham’s Jasper Carrot.
However it is currently in sport that Stoke could be classed as being ”ahead”. It not only boasts the current number one and 13 time world champion Phil Taylor but for the 2008-09 season it has a team containing the city’s name playing in the Premiership. Unlike Birmingham and Birmingham City!!
See I did finally get around to the subject of football again eventually!
Filed under: General | Tagged: city branding, Phil Taylor, Robbie Williams, Stoke City, Stoke-on-trent
…lets not forget other famous Stokies…Mitchell the Spitfire designer and err the Captain of the Titanic.
Indeed, not to be forgotten. Even though the “spitfire island” sculpture is down here in Brum!?#.
I hear that the Titanic brew coming out from the Burslem brewery is pretty good stuff.