It’s just a marketing & PR propaganda exercise for Taunton BID.
Taunton Chamber of Commerce have had no problem getting £45,000 from SWT Council to develop the Taunton BID proposal, but have you wondered what most of that money is spent on? Well evidently most of it goes on an extensive marketing and public relations (PR) spin exercise to buy YES votes. But if BID is such a great thing for the businesses, why do they need to waste tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money on positive spin and press campaigns with readerships in tens of thousands, instead of simply investing time and money in developing in a straight forward comprehensive proposal with all the pro’s and con’s, and give that to the c416 businessess from which they can make up their own minds? We’ve seen an estimated BID development cost for Minehead of c£47,000, so for the 100 YES votes they got, each vote cost £470, is that value for money?
To help demonstrate the point of BID being a marketing and PR spin exercise, just take a look at the profiles of the two service providers playing lead roles in helping develop Taunton BID:
Destination Management & Marketing. This is the BID Consultant, see her LinkedIn profile and as you’ll see she is fully qualified marketer and Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. But even on that point, her professional experience is mainly in Destination Marketing as opposed to Retail Business Marketing, yet Taunton BID’s economy is certainly more retail than tourism. She has many years experience developing BID’s, but it just goes to show that the main skillset required to develop BID’s is marketing to help “package and sell” what is a controversial idea.
Morledge & Co. This is the Strategic Marketing and Public Relations specialist, see her website and LinkedIn profile, and she has been contracted to assist the BID Consultant whom presumably doesn’t have good enough strategic marketing and PR skills. She will likely be organising events, speak to the press and producing literature such as the newsletters and business plan to make them look all glossy and polished etc.
Remember that both these people are paid for just one thing and that’s to help secure a YES vote no matter what, and they have no interest in any businesses saying NO to the BID, it’s not their worry. The BID Consultant is also closely involved in consulting with the businesses to help develop the business plan, starting with conducting research for the Taunton BID feasibility study. A marketing specialist she may be, but when you look at the research done on identifying each business within the BID map, the work was dreadful, very sloppy and full of mistakes as we’ve shown here. This research underpins the revenue numbers in the Business Plan, but she couldn’t even count the number of Taunton car parks and public toilets within the BID area! Taunton Chamber of Commerce seem happy with her research, but perhaps they should have invested in a proper researcher for that part, or even someone who knows Taunton?
Onto their specialist marketing and PR advice provided to the BID working group whom are taken from the local business community, after all Taunton BID are paying the BID Consultant to tell them how to secure YES votes for a BID mandate. Unfortunately it’s clear that some of the positive spin is a step too far and just adding to Taunton BID’s reputational problems already (which remember, was a major contributing factor to the failed 2007-12 BID). For example:
For the 16th July 2019 Cricket Club BID launch event, the straight forward and sensible thing to do for maximum attendance and engagement, would have been to go around town en-mass leaflet dropping all BID businesses with the launch invite. But guess what, following the advice of the BID Consultant the working group decided not to do this, but why not? Consequently many businesses did not even know about the event until after from other sources (such as the press or us!).
Then as we’ve written about already, there are all the mistruths they’ve been putting out through the press, social media and on the BID website, i.e. the Taunton BID website FAQ mistruths, unrealistic match funding promises, lies (or just inept reply) claiming Taunton never had a BID before, lies (or another inept reply) claiming Facebook is only B2C and not B2B (all because they are scared of letting the BID open up debate on Facebook), the detail provided to the Council for a funding grant, and telling us Taunton BID “Consultation is now open to consider having a Business Improvement (BID) in Taunton”, when the decision has already been made to push on with developing a full BID proposal and business plan for ballot in January as they told SWT Council months ago.
On the subject of social media, considering they are meant to be high professional marketing and PR specialists, they certainly seem out of touch with the times given they’re only using Twitter and don’t see any other social platforms useful. Twitter is just one platform with limitations in use, reach and functionality, and you only have to take a look at their Twitter to see for yourself that there is very little engagement.
Their putting down of Taunton and scare-mongering is also shameful, saying things like without BID “livelihoods will be adversely affected if Taunton is allowed to slowly fail”.
So as you can see, Taunton BID are spending vast sums of Council money on what is effectively a vote YES marketing exercise and PR spin campaign, yet there is no such funding for a vote NO campaign (imagine a Brexit referendum with only a Leave campaign). BID’s are extremely controversial because they are an additional council business rate that is meant to benefit a particular area, but like Taunton’s last failed BID, many tend not to deliver on expectations and promises. The operation of BID companies is of course where delivery comes from, but perhaps it’s now also easier to see that mistruths are told and benefits over-sold by vote YES propaganda which can be hard to deliver on. Ultimately BID proposals are carefully orchestrated communication strategies with drawn-out marketing and PR campaigns, by people with no real interest in what the majority businesses really need or want, just to secure enough voting support to push it through. These marketing and PR specialists contracted by Taunton BID are basically ‘mercenaries’ paid for only one thing; to create a campaign securing YES votes no matter what the cost, so don’t believe everything they say, or get the Taunton BID steering group to say!
