Meet Birmingham, the city’s official business tourism programme, has unveiled a new marketing campaign designed to attract more major events to Birmingham, the Black Country and Solihull.
Working with marketing communications agency Cogent Elliott, the ‘Where the World Meets’ campaign encourages event organisers and planners to consider Birmingham as the best location for their conferences and exhibitions. The city maintained its position as the most popular UK regional events destination in the British Meetings & Events Industry Survey 2012/13.
Four figures who play a key role within the city’s business tourism sector have been used as part of advertising and promotional material in a series of striking profile images, all with the Birmingham skyline as a backdrop. A series of messages also appear within the silhouette of each headshot – ‘Where the world meets’, ‘Where the future begins’, ‘Where visions are shared’.
The individuals chosen for the campaign represent the breadth and depth of Birmingham’s meetings offer: Paul Bunce, Marketing Manager at the academic venue Conference Aston; Mark Davies, General Manager of the accommodation provider Hotel Indigo; Lucy Gibbons, Business Development Manager at the sporting venue Edgbaston Stadium; and Sophie Lilly, Account Director at the NEC, one of the busiest exhibition centres in Europe with more than two million visitors to around 140 trade and consumer events.
Birmingham and the wider region has strong credentials for business tourism events thanks to more than 36,000 bed spaces available for event visitors, more than 90% of the UK market within a four hour travel time and major investments into new transport links and facilities. These include the city’s new £600 million New Street station, a £65 million runway extension at Birmingham Airport and the new £189 million Library of Birmingham.
Ian Taylor, Commercial Director at Marketing Birmingham, the city’s strategic marketing partnership that operates Meet Birmingham, said: “Significant investment into Birmingham’s infrastructure, connectivity and civic development promises to change the face of the city forever. While this new landscape is already taking shape, the ‘Where the World Meets’ campaign has been launched to show that it’s not just about the buildings and event spaces in the city, but some of the faces behind them.
“There is no substitute for experience and knowledge when it comes to putting on an event and our Birmingham partners have these attributes in abundance. We have used some of the top individuals from the city’s business tourism sector to remind and inspire event organisers to come and discover all that our city has to offer.”
Lilly added: “Birmingham is a top UK event destination, and remains at the forefront of the conference and events world as it continues to build a very competitive product. As a venue, we are always proud to play an important part in the city’s business tourism profile as it gives us an invaluable platform to demonstrate to a broad audience our award-winning facilities and outstanding levels of flexibility, supported by our location and transport links.”
For more information on the ‘Where the World Meets’ campaign and to find out more about the four individuals involved in the promotional material, log on to www.meetbirmingham.com/wheretheworldmeets.