Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

New brand identity strategy for Haringey

"I am in"

Discuss.

CDC
Haringey Councillor
Liberal Democrat Party

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update to mark the 'soft launch' (click to enlarge):—

The £20,000 film, The Haringey Story

Tags for Forum Posts: I am in, Local Government, brand strategy, folly, identity, nonsense, vanity, waste of money

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The report includes a proposal to produce a video for recruitment purposes. As Haringay has shed over 600 posts in the last 12 months this could be seen as, at the least, somewhat insensitive.
One thing that was completely missing from the report was the actual new corporate identity. Don't suppose you've got this Clive and can share?

Don't suppose you've got this Clive and can share?

Michael, if it were in the public domain – that to the best of my knowledge it isn't yet – then I'd draw attention to it. It being a matter of public interest. Like you, I am in … the dark.

The total cost of the re-branding would be just under £86,000.

I think he is probably talking about recruitment of Chef Executives and their acolytes, not coal-face minions.

I don't think senior staff get recruited as the result of a video John. Far more likely to be approached to apply.

Michael please forgive me for highlighting the obvious, but this would be £86,000 of public funds that would not be spent for any another purpose.

Do you have any comment about the cost?

In a time of cuts and austerity?

Realistically, 86k isn't that much for an organisation that spends over half a billion quid a year. If it could be shown that the rebranding will attract a better calibre of staff, more funding or businesses into the borough, then perhaps it would be money well spent, but I'm not seeing that evidence at all. From the report I simply do not understand what it is they are hoping to achieve by it.
What goads me is the signals it sends out. It's a public relations exercise that has turned into a bit of a public relations nightmare.

And equally realistically, £86,000 isn't that much to keep open just one of the front line services that are being cut or curtailed. Of course, it's not the only one-off chunk of change that's being wasted.

I'm afraid that's not the case Clive. The 86k is a single, one off spend. To keep a post or a service going the 86k would need to be committed to be spent every year.

Re. the "One-Off" argument:

This claim is also made in the Cabinet Member's justifying paper too:

However it is considered that one-off investment in a new visual and brand strategy will have long lasting benefits. 

This won't be the final one-off that is a waste of money: there's likely to be more coming along on more-or-less regular basis.

If you carry on the 'one off' reasoning reductio ad absurdum (and what is proposed is pretty absurd), then there is no limit to the size of spending – nor number of single-spends, that could be excused or dismissed as 'one offs'.

A waste of public money is no less a waste of public for being 'a one-off.'

Unfortunately this 'one off' will inevitably be repeated, just as this 'one off' repeats an equally idiotic exercise carried out seven years ago.

Soon, the 'one offs' that have been justified this manner over the last 18 months will add up to quite a lot of money.

I don't suggest that £86,000 would be enough to keep open a front line service indefinitely. I suggest it might help keep it open longer.

And maybe long enough until it might benefit from the cancellation of a subsequent, wasteful one-off.

You're ranting at the wrong person here Clive. I don't think this is a good use public money. However, the reason frontline services are being cut is not because of the spend of 86k on a pointless corporate rebranding exercise, it's because of the 40% reduction in funding to local government imposed by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government isn't it?

There is still some choice as to how money is spent.

Another alternative use for the apparently spare £86,000 might be to help Syrian war refugees. Not for the rest of their lives, but a little more than a one off. Enough time to give them some immediate help.

The big cuts made by this and the previous government are cuts that would have to be made by any government since the financial crisis of October 2008. They followed the extremely big bank bail-out made by the last disastrous, New Labour government.

The country was made vulnerable by weak supervision of banking, something that at least Jeremy Corbyn has acknowledged and for which Ed Balls made a kind of half-apology.

The total cost of the bank bail-out is in the order of £850,000,000,000, the borrowing of which will remain a burden on the public finances, and to be felt, for years to come: regardless of government political complexion.

I have to agree with Michael here.  £86k was frankly a bargain for what they did.  And even though I initially didn't warm to the new branding (I said at the time it looks "angry and a bit broken" is that what they want to say about Harringay?) but now I've got used to it I find the old logo so old-fashioned and naff, that you can't say it wasn't due for an overhaul.

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