Birmingham's great for business - so tell somebody

Mar 5 2009 By Phil Fowler

t’s rare I’m struck by great thoughts or moments of clarity while sat in a traffic jam. But it happened on a recent Saturday as I headed into Birmingham to watch Aston Villa play Chelsea.

I was wondering where all the cars were actually going. I later discovered it was the queue for Strictly Come Dancing at the LG Arena.

Granted, congestion isn’t the best advert for Birmingham. But at least it shows the great British public will come to our city, even if it’s only to see pretty girls in spangly and revealing dresses. But it got me thinking… are new companies coming to Birmingham?

During a very enjoyable Villa Park brunch, I raised the subject with the businessmen on my table. I posed the question, “What are we doing to encourage firms to relocate to Birmingham?”

I found the responses genuinely interesting, but also a little worrying. The COO of a major bank said he believed the people of Birmingham were very adaptable and hard-working. But he added he felt the rest of the UK had misconceptions about Birmingham. One of the group agreed, but suggested Birmingham folk were very much ‘glass half empty’ rather than ‘glass half full’.

But one comment really got me thinking. One of our number said: “We have world class companies in Birmingham but we don’t shout about it?”

There’s no doubt we can get big-name businesses to come to Birmingham and there have been some great successes over the years. The likes of Deutsche Bank and The Big Lottery Fund are excellent examples, as is the very recent opening of Cancer Research’s first Cancer Super Centre.

But in recent months I have spoken to many companies who admitted they did not consider Birmingham. A representative of one London-based Government agency joked that they drove past Birmingham on the way north. A large project management company said to me last week that his firm services Birmingham from its other offices.

So here’s my point. Birmingham undoubtedly has world class companies staffed by adaptable and hard working people. But are they actively telling the world how great Birmingham is? I would argue they’re not all the time and we need to do something about that.

We need to marketing Birmingham as a great city for business, both to the rest of the UK and further a field. We need to do everything we can to make new companies and people happy here, then encourage them to be ambassadors for Birmingham.

They need to make sure everyone knows exactly what Birmingham has to offer.

Strictly Come Dancing is about scores for performance. I’d certainly give Birmingham a nine or maybe even a ten. If you would too, tell someone else.

* Philip Fowler works for Morgan Lovell.