Ripsaw Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 (Snippets) The government has appointed a firm of marketing consultants — the next key stage of a £500,000 project to raise the Island's profile by establishing a country brand. Acanchi Limited were chosen by the project steering committee after a recruitment process in line with government regulations. The company is headed by Fiona Gilmore, one of the world's leading experts on country branding. Project manager, Ian Gulland, said: 'The committee was especially impressed by the quality of the proposal and presentation provided by Acanchi. There was overwhelming consensus from the committee that the contract should be awarded to Acanchi.' Chief Minister Donald Gelling, who chairs the steering committe, said Acanchi 'promises to provide excellence results'. In July 2004, Tynwald approved a report from the phase-one steering committee of the Marketing and Branding the Isle of Man initiative, and agreed a budget of £500,000 for the project, including £250,000 for the branding consultancy work. In addition, she {Ms. Gilmore} has been involved with the branding strategy of Hong Kong and England, and has extensive experience of China. Full Article Here I thought I would Google Acanchi to see where £0.25m of our money was heading and you'd think that a company that received such glowing reports from our money spenders would light up my monitor... Alas, no such luck. There were only 3 pages of results displaying all this company's achievements (less a number of references to Ms Gilmore's book promotion). Although the company is headed by a person with over 25 years experience (although very thin on actual facts other than a lot of "involved with..."), I can not see much to make me think that our money is going to be well spent. What about the website of such an brilliant Global Company? Bound to be full of innovative ideas, history of accomplishments and copies of glowing reports from past customers... Hmmmmm, Maybe not? but at least there is a link to Ms Gilmore's books (that doesn't work either ) So what about the head of the company? Again I turned to Google for her name and added "branding" to the search string to narrow the results. Do you know that most people give up searching if they can not find a clue to their quest by the third page? I gave up after 2 pages of book reviews. Well apart from one link which started off looking promising.... On Wednesday March the 17th, the China DMA had the great honour to welcome renowned marketing author Fiona Gilmore as a guest speaker. In front of an audience of more than 50 marketing professionals, Fiona detailed her thoughts on how to brand a nation in general and China in particular. Drawing from her extensive work on rebranding Wales and Northern Ireland, she explained that branding a country is very similar to branding a company, only much more complex. She emphasized the need to first understand the power and importance of the brand and then Leverage the "Made in …" label as well as developing and managing national icons. To establish a strong brand culture in China in the near future, the country will have to release all its creative potential. After her presentation, Fiona was happy to talk to members of the attendance and signed copies of her best-selling book on Chinese brands, Brand Warriors of China. D'ohhhhhhh "Ahhhhhh Sod it!" I thought to myself. Never mind, *I* trust our Government to spend our money wisely and I can be sure that any money spent now will be returned 10 fold in the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BSOD Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Yep, very professional, I wont even buy some new printer ink if the website looks a bit iffy, never mind spend 250 grand! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WilDDog Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Ahhhhhh Sod it!" I thought to myself. Never mind, *I* trust our Government to spend our money wisely and I can be sure that any money spent now will be returned 10 fold in the future. Is it just me or do I detect sarcasm in the above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hollandaise Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Do me a favour, guys. £250,000? You can't even buy a four bedroom semi for that anymore. Sounds like good value for money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheTool Posted January 15, 2005 Share Posted January 15, 2005 MMMmmm how hard can it be, why not cut out the middle man and spend £250.000 on subsidised steam packet tickets. People will come over here if the price is right, so if a family can come over here for say £50 in there car then when they get here they spend money would that not be a good way of using OUR money. Isle of man government only needs to link up with a national news paper and give away tickets to the isle of man for £9.99 like they do to france and places and you are on a winner. give me the money and i will show you how to get tourists to come here. About time we got rid of the bakers butchers and candlestick makers in government and got more professional people with expertise in these matters not the local chemist or shop keeper. Blind leading the blind me thinks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rog Posted January 15, 2005 Share Posted January 15, 2005 MMMmmm how hard can it be, why not cut out the middle man and spend £250.000 on subsidised steam packet tickets. People will come over here if the price is right, so if a family can come over here for say £50 in there car then when they get here they spend money would that not be a good way of using OUR money. Isle of man government only needs to link up with a national news paper and give away tickets to the isle of man for £9.99 like they do to france and places and you are on a winner. give me the money and i will show you how to get tourists to come here. About time we got rid of the bakers butchers and candlestick makers in government and got more professional people with expertise in these matters not the local chemist or shop keeper. Blind leading the blind me thinks. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Some very good points and in my opinion some very good thinking. Rememer what made Tesco so big --- 'Pile 'em high, ad sell 'em cheap'. . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirdick Posted January 15, 2005 Share Posted January 15, 2005 Except when it comes to Christmas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ripsaw Posted January 15, 2005 Author Share Posted January 15, 2005 Isle of man government only needs to link up with a national news paper and give away tickets to the isle of man for £9.99 like they do to france and places and you are on a winner. Like they did with the vouchers in the Waking Ned video cases? Oh no, hang on, that was Stenna Line, offering discounted sailings to Ireland to see "Ned's Homeland"... The Branding comitee was set up to bring together the Manx Government and businesses to create the definitive IoM plc perception to the outside world. *INTERUPTION* At this point I opened Google to do some "Branding Isle of Man" searches. Near the bottom of the first page is a link to a press release of April 2004, The page is no longer available, but god bless Google's cached pages... the Isle of Man content on the Visit Britain official website is still more likely to discourage rather than encourage potential visitors, which is worrying because a visitor to the official website is more likely to book a British holiday as a qualified sales lead. The official website receives over one million visitors per year - so we believe that more effort should be focused on attention to detail to ensure a larger slice of an obviously easier pie. The article goes on to uncover some of the basic information that could be readily available to short break visitor, but isn't and is critical of this fact. You can read Google's cached page * Here *. The website IOM Gov.com is openly available, although as the Site Stats page states "Please note that we have not advertised our website at all to date." I have added the site to my favorites because the articles that I have flicked through appear to be more critical and reportive of Government activities than is currently available in the "known world". Certainly some data in there that would please the "Manx Media sucks up to Government" brigade. Did anyone see this in the local media? The latest low cost flights offer means that return flights to Liverpool and Dublin are now available at thirty six pounds. EasyJet are the main low cost operator in Liverpool, but Ryanair also fly to Dublin and Barcelona. Ryanair are the main low cost operator in Dublin and they have nearly one million seats on sale from less than one pound each way plus taxes until midnight on Thursday. Unfortunetly that isn't next Thursday, as that article was dated 23rd Aug 2004. If you have a few minutes spare have a look at the News Archive, I like it. I like it a lot /back on thread... Will have to wait, I am busy "researching" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulMan Posted January 15, 2005 Share Posted January 15, 2005 They need rebranding alright, on their arses and foreheads with a huge "Dont vote for me 'coz it's suicide" burn. Damn sight cheaper too. lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ripsaw Posted January 15, 2005 Author Share Posted January 15, 2005 Just a quick quote on the Subject of "Open Government" ...Departments are clearly aware that they are able to "interpret" the rules. They simply select an exemption and apply it incorrectly to any inconvenient request in order to prevent disclosure of factual information... {snip} We reluctantly filed an official complaint against the Financial Supervision Commission on 5 November 2003 due to an impasse under the code of practice. Due to the rarity of an official complaint, only a handful are received each year, it would be reasonable to assume that a new official complaint would be assessed and addressed relatively fast. We had still not received any response one month later, so we called in at the public counter. We discovered that departments are not actually publicly accountable under the existing open government system. Source: IOM Gov.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doric Posted January 19, 2005 Share Posted January 19, 2005 maybe im one of those conspiratory Theorists, I don't know. but i reckon the reason the Mannin lime was taken off the radio is because it portrayed to the outside world the wrong thing. all you get on now these days is high-ups and pomposity that sort of thing. Toeing the establishmint line. It glosses it over dosent it really. Pretty boring sanitised stuff it always is too. These days I am mostly listening to Radio 4. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snaipyr Posted January 19, 2005 Share Posted January 19, 2005 I rarely listen live to Manx Radio now - mainly to avoid the awful ads in their awful accents. The last one that had me diving for the off button was a certain glazing company 'My husband only wants the best, blah blah blah..' I'd boycot the company just for inflicting that ad on us. I do listen to certain programmes on the archives though. Some time ago I heard Richard Corkill say on radio that he didn't like the Mannin Line - so you could be right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happy camper Posted January 19, 2005 Share Posted January 19, 2005 As far as I'm concerned it was the right decision to take the Mannin Line off the air. It was over populated by a bunch of narrers who talked rot. Nice one Manx Radio! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ccsnet Posted January 19, 2005 Share Posted January 19, 2005 (Snippets) The government has appointed a firm of marketing consultants — the next key stage of a £500,000 project to raise the Island's profile by establishing a country brand. Acanchi Limited were chosen by the project steering committee after a recruitment process in line with government regulations. The company is headed by Fiona Gilmore, one of the world's leading experts on country branding. Project manager, Ian Gulland, said: 'The committee was especially impressed by the quality of the proposal and presentation provided by Acanchi. There was overwhelming consensus from the committee that the contract should be awarded to Acanchi.' Chief Minister Donald Gelling, who chairs the steering committe, said Acanchi 'promises to provide excellence results'. In July 2004, Tynwald approved a report from the phase-one steering committee of the Marketing and Branding the Isle of Man initiative, and agreed a budget of £500,000 for the project, including £250,000 for the branding consultancy work. In addition, she {Ms. Gilmore} has been involved with the branding strategy of Hong Kong and England, and has extensive experience of China. Full Article Here I thought I would Google Acanchi to see where £0.25m of our money was heading and you'd think that a company that received such glowing reports from our money spenders would light up my monitor... Alas, no such luck. There were only 3 pages of results displaying all this company's achievements (less a number of references to Ms Gilmore's book promotion). Although the company is headed by a person with over 25 years experience (although very thin on actual facts other than a lot of "involved with..."), I can not see much to make me think that our money is going to be well spent. What about the website of such an brilliant Global Company? Bound to be full of innovative ideas, history of accomplishments and copies of glowing reports from past customers... Hmmmmm, Maybe not? but at least there is a link to Ms Gilmore's books (that doesn't work either ) So what about the head of the company? Again I turned to Google for her name and added "branding" to the search string to narrow the results. Do you know that most people give up searching if they can not find a clue to their quest by the third page? I gave up after 2 pages of book reviews. Well apart from one link which started off looking promising.... On Wednesday March the 17th, the China DMA had the great honour to welcome renowned marketing author Fiona Gilmore as a guest speaker. In front of an audience of more than 50 marketing professionals, Fiona detailed her thoughts on how to brand a nation in general and China in particular. Drawing from her extensive work on rebranding Wales and Northern Ireland, she explained that branding a country is very similar to branding a company, only much more complex. She emphasized the need to first understand the power and importance of the brand and then Leverage the "Made in …" label as well as developing and managing national icons. To establish a strong brand culture in China in the near future, the country will have to release all its creative potential. After her presentation, Fiona was happy to talk to members of the attendance and signed copies of her best-selling book on Chinese brands, Brand Warriors of China. D'ohhhhhhh "Ahhhhhh Sod it!" I thought to myself. Never mind, *I* trust our Government to spend our money wisely and I can be sure that any money spent now will be returned 10 fold in the future. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> For £0.25m I'll bring my laptop and printer with me when I come over later in the year, I can run all the brochers off.... :) Terran EDIT - Heres my CV - I CAN do this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheTool Posted January 19, 2005 Share Posted January 19, 2005 Look the government is run by fools and you know what they say about a fool and his money. All the government needs to do is hire a specialist in advertising not branding, after all the branding people are going to say that we need to advertise lol. Its about time we had experts running the likes of the tourism and all the rest of the departments not 50p shop owners, chemists and chimney sweeps. These people are seeing that being a MHK is a career not a public service. I think MHK's should only get £18.000 a year and a free car and petrol. Look at the local Commissioners they get hardly anything but they still do the duty they got voted in for. This is from the dictionary : Brand = 1. a make of goods with special trademark. 2. a permanent mark made by a red-hot iron. Now this branding thing to me is someone telling you to make yourself a logo so that when people see it they know it is the isle of man, now how do they get to know about the logo and the isle of man, wait for it yes you are right through advertising. And whats the best way to reach a large population National Newspapers, TV Adverts or getting in touch with TV travel programs to do visits here. £250.000 to tell the government this lol i would do it for nowt. Ned Flanders has Branded the island recently and he did it for nothing lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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