As Liverpool enjoys a new era as a global name associated with energy and investment, Lisa Miles examines the increasing calls to use a city region brand to market Merseyside and the stormy debates that follow
Slowly but surely the name "Merseyside" has been slipping virtually unnoticed out of brochures, marketing and websites across the region in both the public and private sectors.It is being surreptitiously replaced by phrases such as "Liverpool city region" in a long-running stealth attack on a name that is little known outside of the UK. Although when we say "surreptitiously" we mean emblazoned boldly on the home page of inward investment and tourism agency The Mersey Partnership (TMP) - somewhat at odds with its web address of www.merseyside.org - and proclaimed loudly in speeches, debates and meetings across Merseyside by public officials and business leaders alike.
The city is leading the attack. n "It all started for me when I first came to Liverpool two years ago," says Mike Taylor, chief executive of business support agency Business Liverpool. "It's very easy to understand that, while Liverpool has had its problems, it's an extraordinary success story and I was a bit shocked that there wasn't anybody whose job it was to define and articulate the Liverpool brand. "Who markets the city? It was done at a suboptimal level under the Merseyside brand.
When we go to MIPIM we can only really be there as Liverpool because it's the world-class brand.
It's amazing not to use that." MIPIM is the property industry's annual conference in Cannes, attended by over 21,000 key industry players from over 74 countries.
It is Merseyside's opportunity to market itself on the international stage as an investment location, be it for St Helens, Southport or the city centre. "At MIPIM, when you look at the presentations, it's not just cities - it's defined city regions and all the different authorities in those areas come together," says Philip Rooney, office managing partner at DLA Piper in Liverpool. "This is about Merseyside doing that with a very clear name.
You are selling across a very wide geographical area but using a very well-known brand.
The city centre of Liverpool is very important because it spreads out its effect around the hinterland, so there is no reason why, at least as a marketing exercise, we can't look at a Liverpool city region." And so Liverpool has made a bold move with its plans for MIPIM in 2007.
The council has written to the other boroughs and invited them to join the city at the event in March, with the potential for including specific presentations on each area.
It's a decisive gesture that is effectively creating a city region brand without having to enter into lengthy discourse on the subject.
Taylor at Business Liverpool, which organises the MIPIM trip for Liverpool, sees this move as indicative of a desire to market a clear articulation of the Liverpool city region. "It will be promoting Liverpool for the sake of the wider city region," he says. "Many of Liverpool's assets exist in wider Merseyside - Liverpool doesn't have all the necessary assets.
The brand needs to reflect the interests of the other local authorities." He is adamant that after years of unsuccessful debate now is the time to act, but he knows that the other boroughs must buy in to the concept. "It seems obvious that if you're going to be a serious global player then Liverpool is the brand.
But we have to realise that Liverpool would not have been a successful city without the surrounding region and vice versa - the two come together.
There does need to be movement around this now," he says.
MIPIM 2007 will be the starting point. "From a pure marketing point of view, we would want to market the wider city region as Liverpool.
We've got to demonstrate the value to the other local authorities in that process, but it's also for them to have a say as well," says Taylor. "If we can sit there comfortably and embrace the ideas of all the local authorities at MIPIM, we've cracked it.
At the moment we all agree to do the suboptimal thing rather than the right thing, because it's more comfortable." This is, of course, a classic political hot potato, mainly because there is a persistent misunderstanding about the difference between a brand - a word with which to market Merseyside to a global audience - and a name - Merseyside was only defined and named as a county in 1974, much to the dismay of those residents who to this day still assert that they live in Lancashire or Cheshire.
When Insider approached the boroughs of Wirral, Halton, Knowsley, Sefton and St Helens to ask whether the councils felt they would benefit from marketing themselves under a Liverpool brand, there was much muttering from press officers regarding "supercities", "supercouncils", elected mayors and the like.
But even after a lengthy explanation of the branding issue none of the authorities chose to comment.
The business community across Merseyside is free to articulate its views on the subject.
Nigel Lax is from Industrial Securities, the developer of a 800,000 sq ft mixed-use Atlantic Park business scheme on Sefton's Dunningsbridge Road.
He says: "There is a misconception that doing away with Merseyside in marketing terms will see boroughs such as Knowsley or Sefton lose out.
But I think the reality is quite different.
Liverpool is the biggest employer for these surrounding areas so trading on "Liverpool' will actually serve them better, attracting more high-profile businesses and investors to the area. "We recognised the knock-on effect that Liverpool's city centre was having across the borough and the development potential that the north of the city could yield.
This economic sea change, led by Liverpool, made Merseyside more attractive for us in development terms and certainly influenced the decision of park owner Royal London to invest. "In my view, and I speak with the authority of someone who was born in Liverpool, the notion of Merseyside has no real currency outside of the North West and, for a city with international aspirations, that just isn't good enough." As a regular traveller abroad, particularly to his factory in China, Tony Caldeira, managing director of Knowsley-based cushion manufacturer Caldeira, already uses the name Liverpool. "In the UK everybody knows where Merseyside is so here I'm a Merseyside business," he says. "When I'm abroad with "Knowsley, Merseyside' on my business card people ask where it is.
But they've heard of Liverpool and immediately mention Steven Gerrard or the Beatles." In the further-flung corners of Merseyside close associations with Liverpool may be harder to swallow. But even in St Helens there is a desire to trade on the city's brand.
Anthony Ball, co-founder of online mobile phone comparison service OneCompare.com, based in St Helens, says: "I normally say to people that I'm in between Liverpool and Manchester, so the Liverpool brand does come in handy, but a lot of the time when I say in the UK that I'm from St Helens people know where it is because of the rugby.
When I speak to certain people it would be useful to say that I'm from a Liverpool business belt, but it's not a huge boost either way. A Liverpool city region brand would be an improvement, especially with Capital of Culture, but, in my opinion, if Manchester did something like this it would be more useful because Manchester is becoming the new London.
We could fall under anything." While businesses are ready and willing to buy in to a city region brand, the perceived inability of the public sector to grasp the nettle could be damaging inward investment prospects.
Mark Connor, chief executive at Vermont Developments and a keen advocate of a Liverpool city region brand, is mystified. "Why are they not calling for it? It's slightly short-sighted of them.
They should be thinking: "Let's trade off the Liverpool name, use it to our own advantage.' They can still have very clear identities, but in trade and commerce you must use the Liverpool brand," he says. "If inward investment comes to Liverpool then the hinterland must benefit.
It would be puerile not to support Liverpool because of your own agenda and prejudice investment. If Liverpool's not a strong brand then the others can't expect to be.
It needs maturity from the other boroughs and a bit of vision.
You can retain your identity and support the Liverpool brand." In 2006 Connor, along with contemporaries in Liverpool at DLA Piper, property agent City Residential, PR firm Paver Smith and financial group Rensburg Sheppards, launched a manifesto to create a truly business-friendly city, a document that proffers a helping hand from the private sector to those public figures keen to promote this angle.
The manifesto calls for a champion salesman to market the Liverpool brand and the group thinks they've found one in the form of council leader and fireman Warren Bradley.
Connor's enthusiasm for the current regime is infectious. "These people are beginning to talk about not managing by consensus," he says. "Instead they're thinking: "Let's do it, do what we know is best for the city and all the stakeholders will have to come on board or will be shooting themselves in the foot.' "Merseyside is not a strong enough global name.
People know Liverpool because of the Beatles, football, maritime.
If we're going to market ourselves it's got to be effective and simple.
To do that we should use our strength: the name Liverpool." Rather than sitting round a table with the many stakeholders in Merseyside and making a collective decision to use a Liverpool city region brand, Liverpool has chosen to go it alone in the hope that the others will follow. "The issue really is, what's the alternative?" says Taylor. "At the moment our relative inward investment success is appalling.
What are we going to do about it? If we put more resources into inward investment, we have to do it with the right brand attached.
There are a lot of success stories at the moment, but we're getting nowhere in terms of catching up. "When the other local authorities see Liverpool doing this in the right, collaborative, partnership way, why would they not want to be a part of it? It's for Liverpool to show true leadership and show what they could gain.
It's a win-win situation."