A humble homecoming!

About a month ago I had a meeting with the Events and PR manager for Manchester City Council. I had heard on the grapevine that the council were planning an Olympic homecoming celebration for the North West members of Team GB who performed so well this summer in Beijing. Having watched the Olympics with a great deal of pride for our athletes, I wanted to get involved in making this event a success. So, I offered to run a month long direct email campaign that would target 10,000 employees in the Manchester City Centre area. Since the event was to be at 6pm, they would make an ideal audience for the celebration, people being able join the festivities directly after work. This would normally cost several thousand pounds, but I convinced the company I work for that it was a public service and that we should do it for free.

My contact at the council loved the idea and could not thank us enough. She felt that she needed all the support she could get due to her limited budget and resources. We struck the deal and went to work. Two days later, whilst our programmers and designers were working on the first part of the campaign, I received a regretful call saying that unfortunately Manchester City Council would not be taking advantage of our services. It seems that the beurocratic machine of the public sector had once again ploughed progress to a stop. Our plan needed to be agreed by "the partners" of the event and it seemed someone thought they could handle it on their own.

I don't like to say "I told you so", but last night I wondered down to Albert Square in Manchester to watch the event and was quietly satisfied to see the area that easily held 9000 Glasgow Rangers fans earlier this year playing host to no more than 150 attendees of the Olympic Homecoming Ceremony, most of which were the families and friends of the athletes themselves.

Our athletes in Beijing did a fantastic job and their success deserves to be celebrated. This event could have been a huge success, yet the council chose to assume that people would turn out merely through word of mouth. The dissapointment on the faces of the athletes was obvious to see when they realised just how few had turned out and I felt like telling them that it is not apathy of the people of the North West that caused this but red tape, bad organisation and most importantly, a real lack of effective communication on behalf of Manchester City Council.