22nd Jun 2009

WAA invites businesses to Meet Birmingham

Marketing Birmingham has tasked WAA with the prestigious project to convey the city as a first class meeting place as part of its business tourism campaign.

The organisation enlisted WAA's support in enhancing the city's reputation within the business tourism industry, resulting in the Meet Birmingham campaign, devised to represent the city as a modern, cosmopolitan, dynamic and diverse location for conducting business.

As part of the £25,000 project, the agency devised on and off-line ad executions, campaign guidelines, corporate identity and stationery. In addition, WAA also created an inspiring film to capture the interest of potential visitors and drive them to contact the Birmingham Convention Bureau.

WAA has worked on the Business Tourism campaign since 2005, but this project involved an open tender and four way competitive pitch, which saw WAA tasked with creating a completely new creative look and feel.

Jacqui Lennon, Managing Director of WAA, said: "This was an exciting project that we were able to inject all of our passion into. We invigorated an obvious word in the business tourism industry – meet – and applied it to the concept of meeting a world-class city with all it had to offer – Meet Birmingham.

"In order to reach a strapline and city positioning statement we held a Campaign Brand Key workshop at WAA with the key account team and strategic planner. 

"We needed to reach a unique, big city statement which meant going through the competitive environment, industry trends, target audience, insight and substantiations. This eventually led us to the campaign essence and the creative team developed the strapline accordingly."

Emma Gray, head of marketing for Marketing Birmingham, said: "As part of the campaign, WAA worked on a Meet Birmingham film, which perfectly demonstrates how diverse and exciting the city is. 

"It highlights the length and breadth of the venues on offer as well as the service ethos and warmth of the people in the city, and we're confident that it will encourage business guests to return as leisure breakers," she added.