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Conventional wisdom
Not surprisingly when your job
depends on enticing visitors
to Birmingham, Paul Thandi,
chief executive of the NEC Group,
has strong ideas on marketing the
city. “There is lots of good stuff about
Birmingham… but there is also lots
of not great stuff,” he admits.
We have diverged from discussing the National Exhibition Centre, International Convention Centre, Symphony Hall and the National Indoor Arena, for which he is responsible, and on to ‘Brand Birmingham’.
“Birmingham has a long way to go,” says Thandi. “We could become a global player but we need to be more trailblazing. We need things people will travel to see, and to look at education and skills. We need to attract more businesses, but to do that we need an international school.
“The transport also needs to be right. We need to pedestrianise the city centre; it has to be liveable.”
He has been beating the transport drum for some time, arguing that if high-speed rail arrives there should be two stops – the NEC/Airport and the city centre. But if we only get one, then make it the NEC, with “a 21st century link straight into Birmingham in less than seven minutes”.
Thandi – not content with just the Mailbox and Bullring – says the retail offer must also improve, and cites London’s old-style Borough Market. “We need to make people come into our city,” he says.
And he is scathing about Birmingham talking all too often to itself: “Birmingham needs to market itself in London and internationally.”
Aren’t we sort of doing that, with the office we have in the capital?
“We are getting smarter about London,” he admits. “I use the office in London, the council uses it, but others need to use it. And why can’t we have a showroom there about Birmingham? We have fantastic science, medicine, green technology and the environment. These are sectors we have to cluster around.”
He believes Birmingham has to aspire to one other magic ingredient. “We need to become cool,” he says. “We need bands, comedians, film stars and designers. And, if need be, we should subsidise their careers.”
If it takes five to ten years then so be it. And he wants the public and private sectors engaging more. He acknowledges that the city council and its leader, Mike Whitby, are aware of the issues and have been pushing Birmingham abroad. But he wants the strategy laid down succinctly: “It only needs to be on three sheets of A4.”
Perhaps a little optimistic given that his vision statements are sprawled all over the NEC website – promises “to be the best we can be” and being “the dictionary definition of teamwork”. The Duckers theory, I say, is that the typical chief executive’s abilities are in inverse proportion to the amount of management speak they pour out.
But not for nothing was Thandi’s first love psychology. He hits back: “You have to tell people what you want them to do and get them to believe in you. So they will follow. Then you have to tell each of them exactly what is expected of them, monitor it and improve. And where they are not doing what you want them to do, you take them to task.
“The way the guy on the gate greets people will have an effect on our profits and why people visit. The same is true of the chefs cooking the meals, the guys serving in the restaurants and the accountants. They need to understand how their job relates to the bigger picture.”
The workforce seems to have bought into it. The guy on the gate was helpful and apologetic because his computer had broken down. Twice while I was waiting in the reception I was spontaneously asked by passing individuals if I would like a coffee.
Thandi is right – it makes a difference. The NEC Group employs 1,000 people directly, but it claims to contribute more than £2bn a year to the West Midlands’ economy and supports nearly 29,000 jobs.
But it has been hard hit by the recession – 82 redundancies were announced last year. Thandi says the downturn has left the business at 80 per cent of where it was in 2006/07.
He doesn’t think that will come back in a hurry – maybe returning to 90 per cent. That is partly because as the economy generally was over-inflated before the crash, so was that of the NEC Group. And manufacturing and financial services have been hit. He is also irritated that London rival the ExCel centre has been cutting prices to the point, he claims, of creating a “false market”. But it still hasn’t been able to win business from the NEC, he says. In 2008/09 the group had revenues of £128m, an operating< profit of £36.5m and a profit after paying interest on its loans of £2.7m.
The next set of figures will not be as good. “We have taken a hit on revenues and profits,” says Thandi. But he will not speculate on whether< the facilities will be in the red.
No wonder he is looking to develop the NEC Group in a big way. Lots of areas have been improved. Catering, the conference product and the retail offer have had a £40m makeover. In total, £29m was spent reinvigorating what is now the LG Arena, which can hold 16,000 people. The group is also much better at collecting data from its customers to improve its marketing.
But he wants to make much more of the NEC site. “We have an international airport beside us, potential for an international rail link and the UK motorway network on our doorstep. What we are developing is a 365-day, 24/7 destination NEC,” he says.
Whether you go there to work, rest or play, the NEC has something for you, he argues. Thandi sees the operation as competing with Shanghai, Delhi, Dubai, Paris, Milan, Frankfurt and New York. And to that end he is desperate to get a casino on the site.
One of the largest leisure and entertainment complexes in the UK is planned as part of a £90m development, which would create 1,000 jobs. Called Resorts World @ The NEC, it will be brought together from a partnership between the NEC Group and Genting Stanley (Solihull), creating a four-star hotel, restaurant and casino. The complex is set to open in 2012 but it’s dependent on winning a licence from Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council early this year.
Is this diversification because the internet and virtualisation are going to kill the exhibition industry as we know it? “The exhibition industry will continue to survive,” Thandi insists. “You can’t do the face-to-face stuff any other way and that is still important. People still need to go and kick the tyres. It is about discovering the future of the market, future products, future regulations and future suppliers.”
Which is not to say he is complacent about change. He sees Twitter and Google Search as opportunities to push products and, for example, sell spare tickets fast. And he recalled how the boss of BT recently did a virtual presentation to a gathering of his staff in one of the NEC halls.
I wonder how much more a virtual Thandi could achieve alongside the real thing?
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