To give a bit of background, every so often the city council (or a Birmingham-focussed organisation) will award a contract to a company unfortunate enough to be based somewhere other than Birmingham. In the past couple of years Marketing Birmingham and the MAC have been lambasted for looking further afield for suppliers.

The Library of Birmingham is the latest, having awarded a PR contract to a company in London called Colman Getty after a tendering process which involved several local companies. Unfortunately, the result has been the kind of short-sighted outcry that clamours for protectionism and only makes us look ridiculous, parochial and insecure.

The Birmingham Post have provided the headline most likely to feature in indignant tweets:

Library of Birmingham marketing contract awarded to London firm

Whereas Business Desk WM have been a bit more measured with:

Midlands firms beaten to Library PR contract by London agency

I like how those two seem to imply slightly different things.

On the plus side

Ok, so they might not be from around these parts, and I can’t tell whether the best company won (I haven’t read the proposals and I didn’t see the pitches) but lets see if they have anything to recommend them.

Colman Getty’s clients includes cultural and literary institutions like the Saatchi Gallery, Manchester’s Lowry Centre, the Man Booker Prize, Cheltenham Literary Festival and JK Rowling. So that experience could come in handy when drawing up a “high impact regional, national and international campaign” for the LoB.

Although bids of up to £350,000 were invited, they’ve asked for £292,000 (83% of the total). That seems decent of them, especially as we all know how expensive those London agencies are.

Incidentally, someone mentioned that that’s a lot of money to spend on marketing. Bearing in mind that’s to cover activity over a three-year period for a £189m project that’s meant to give Birmingham some international profile it doesn’t seem all that much to me.

The interesting bit that’s been missed

Colman Getty’s MD says she’s looking forward to working with Birmingham City Council and, more interestingly, “our partners, Writing West Midlands“. So there’s a local link. It’ll be good to find out what role they’ll be playing.

If you only read one thing…

What I usually do when this issue crops up is point towards the guest post that Fullrange’s Lee Kemp wrote for the Birmingham Post a couple of years ago. It’s the best explanation I’ve come across for why reserving regional projects for regional companies is a bad idea. Although I should give a nod to Pete Ashton’s post and the comments below it.

So, while I’m sorry for the likes of Rewired and S&X (who are understood to have pitched for the work – and I’ve only got the BPo and BLWM stories to go from) and others who pitched, it’s surely healthy to bring others into the city.

Tomorrow

I might round-up a load of work that companies in Birmingham have been winning from under the noses of other agencies in other cities. No-one seems to make so much of a fuss over that news.