Breeze Strategy

Staffordshire's Blue-Chip Hatrick

It's been quite a year for Staffordshire with three major inward investment successes from three of the world's biggest blue-chip brands.

First there was Amazon's 900-job project, followed by the headline-grabbing JLR 750-job plant and now news comes of Nestle investing £110m creating 300 new jobs at its coffee manufacturing facility 

So that's nearly 2,000 new jobs to support coffee-sipping, Jag-driving, book-reading consumers - sounds like Staffordshire has it sussed!

Inward Investment the Berlusconi Way!

The Italian debt crisis reminds us all of the need to attract inward investment, but it also tells us that politicians are not always the best people to define your proposition.

In a speech to the New York stock exchange in 2003, Italy's silver-tongued PM announced:

"Italy is now a great country to invest in... today we have fewer communists and those who are still there deny having been one. Another reason to invest in Italy is that we have beautiful secretaries... superb girls."

It certainly makes a refreshing change from "centrally located with a cost-effective workforce, great quality of life and available sites and premises" but I don't think it had many investors queuing up to invest.

Don't think that it's just the Italians who try to add a bit of sex appeal to inward investment marketing, the Invest in Germany campaign with Claudia Schiffer in 2006 was just a slicker version of the Berlusconi approach to FDI.

Attracting jobs where they are needed

You can't shoehorn an inward investment where it doesn't want to go, but you can focus on where it could make the most impact.

The latest research from Breeze Strategy shows that between July-September 2011, the UK saw 110 announcements of projects that will each create more than 20 jobs, and more than half will create 100 or more jobs. These projects were created by both foreign and UK companies and are across all sectors of the economy.

The interesting part is that firms are choosing to invest and expand in the areas that need the jobs most. The top five areas, each attracting more than a thousand new jobs this summer were:

- Staffordshire

- Tees Valley

- Tyne & Wear

- Manchester

- Merseyside

In fact 81% of these jobs are being created in the north and midlands - not London and the south east.

For more details see the latest Inward Investment Quarterly.

Social Media and Inward Investment

Once upon a time, having a good website, put your location ahead of the pack; but then everywhere else got one too.  What will make investors and their advisors take any notice today? The answer doesn’t lie with your website, but what you do with it. If it’s nothing more than a pretty online brochure with words and pictures, you’re missing a huge opportunity.

Your website should be the backbone,  the beating heart and the thinking mind of an ongoing body of communications. It should:

-          initiate  timely and relevant conversations

-          engage and interact with target audiences

-          build meaningful relationships

To do these things, your website must be integrated with other online features such as blogs (Wordpress), videos (YouTube), photos (Flickr), networks and discussion groups (LinkedIn) and live news feeds (Twitter).

Inward investment teams should be using new tools like LinkedIn and Twitter to initiate, facilitate and amplify conversations and relationships that will enhance their profile and reputation.

For a glimpse into the future, look at how the inward investment battleground has shifted online in the US. Recently, the banana company, Chiquita, has been in the middle of an online battle between Cincinnati  (their existing HQ) and Charlotte (their potential new HQ). This battle, played out largely through Twitter, is a lesson in how to rally support and get your message across to the senior decision-makers. See: http://tinyurl.com/bananaHQtweets

 

To help the UK inward investment community, Breeze Strategy is building a range of social media networks:

 

LinkedIn

Our Inward Investment group on LinkedIn has now got more than 330 members: if you’re not one of them, take a look and sign up, it’s really easy.

The group is carefully managed and moderated, so it’s kept free of spammers, time-wasters and self-publicists.

Join at: www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=3640297

 

Twitter

To complement the LinkedIn group, Breeze Strategy has launched an inward investment twitter feed that will provide a few carefully chosen bits of breaking inward investment news and the odd rye comment.

Follow @InwardInvest

Careless talk costs jobs

Simple message to business leaders after a difficult few days, don’t spread fear and negativity. Two comments from people who should know better… 

"Who will want to invest in – [ location name redacted by me ] - now? I am convinced the region still has a lot to offer inward investors but this has made attracting them more difficult."
Institute of Directors, regional chair.

"There is also the question of what this does for the wider image of the UK in terms of inward investment."
British Chambers of Commerce chief.

I suggest that people think carefully before spouting off predictions of woe.

In 2005, French cities saw 20 consecutive nights of violence and rioting. One year later, Invest in France announced a 12% increase in new projects.

Colleagues overseas promoting the UK as an inward investment location should actively spread the many positive stories such as the Broom army and the fantastic response of local people to have major cities like Birmingham and Manchester back to normal so quickly.

London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Paris, Los Angeles, Vancouver… all great cities have their problems, but the true test of greatness is how they respond.

Yes, things have been very bad. But talking up a problem only makes it worse.