Marketing Birmingham, which is charged with promoting the city as a visitor destination, hired Hatch to carry out a 12-month campaign to maximise its sponsorship of local Premiership football clubs Aston Villa and Birmingham City.

So, that’s a Leeds-based firm, which has no connection to Birmingham, working with local football teams to help promote the city? Cue the backlash from Birmingham’s PR and marketing sector.

The decision to appoint an ‘outside’ agency was branded as “ludicrous”, “totally ridiculous” and a “slap in the face for Birmingham’s creative industries sector” by some of the more vociferous members of the sector.

And the reason for hiring Hatch, you might ask? Well, apparently they had experience of working with football clubs, which none of the local agencies could demonstrate. Surely that can’t be right, can it? I thought not, but when asked to name a Birmingham/West Midlands agency with specialist sports experience I drew a blank.

If this is really the case then clearly there is a gap in the market for such an agency that can offer the required specialist sports PR services. Should this gap be filled, maybe organisations like Marketing Birmingham wouldn’t have to look elsewhere.

Whilst I firmly believe that you should always try to support local businesses, to be fair to Marketing Birmingham, you can’t expect them to appoint an agency just because they are based in the city/ region. They had to choose the best people for the job, which on this occasion happened to be Hatch Communications.

Of course, it’s not just Marketing Birmingham that is guilty – rightly or wrongly – of buying in PR services from outside the region. I know there are countless other examples of local companies using agencies that are based elsewhere in the country – but I won’t name and shame them here. 

The question is why go elsewhere when Birmingham is home to a plethora of PR and marketing agencies, from small niche independent consultants to large national full service firms, offering a variety of services and expertise, from media relations to online communications strategies?

If you can’t find what you’re looking for in Birmingham, you’re unlikely to find it anywhere else – unless it relates to football, in which case you’d better go to Leeds.

ENDS