Time to paint the City Purple!

This weekend will be the official launch of the Purple Flag accreditation for Waterford City. But before I go on to write about the importance of this promotional project I must comment on the return of flights from Waterford City to, in particular, London Luton.

As you read this article we will have already seen dozens of flights take off and land between Waterford City and London Luton. It is great news to see VLM commit to the reinstatement of flights between Waterford City and London Luton. Luton is around 30 minutes from London St.Pancras International (which incidentally was the station used for the Harry Potter films) and it is then just a short tube ride from the very heart of London City. The timetable is now even more user friendly as you can depart Waterford City at 07:30 and return on the evening flight from Luton at 18:40. This of course does mean that you can pop over to London for a quick business meeting and be home at a reasonable time that evening. In addition we must also take into account that the airport is literally on our doorstep and the travel time back home from the airport is inevitably under 1 hour and that sort of convenience is worth its weight in gold after a long day.

We must also remember that it was only last December, at the final City Council meeting of 2014, that it was announced that the flights operated by BMI would cease in 2015 and for the staff of the airport to turn this negative around to this week’s huge positive news takes an awful lot of time, work and effort. So we must show our support for Waterford Airport and book our flights whenever possible out from Waterford Airport.

Is it the right time to paint the City Purple! Well the answer is of course a big fat YES.

As a Purple Flag designated City we can open a world of possibilities to create a City that will be appealing to new customers base and a whole new audience. Like the Blue Flag Beach accreditation the Purple Flag award for Cities and Towns will deliver certain standards for cleanliness, street lighting, safety, communication, nightlife, and so on. This a truly a collaborative effort that has been coordinated through the City Centre Management Group (CCMG) and supported by the Council, Waterford Business Group, the Garda, City Businesses and a wide range of stakeholders. It is a real chance to once and for all make the City Centre a vibrant destination once again.

And yes there are still issues around the retail mix, concerns around safety, the uniformity of late night opening hours, the cost of car parking...but this Purple Flag is a starting point from where we can ALL drive the City forward with a positive message. We need to talk up the City’s offering in order to attract new retailers, attract a greater variety of late night offerings, encourage a late night cafe culture (as we see across the whole of Europe) and above all we need to get our citizens back into the City Centre to start loving our City once again.

The brand that is Waterford City needs to regenerate itself and everyone must become that Brand Ambassador the City so badly needs. We all have our part to play and we all need to accentuate the positives rather than the negatives. And if you feel that there are issues, come up with a solution and do not just come forward with a complaint that can be posted anonymously across the ever widening range of social media channels. If you can contribute in a positive way then do just that.

The importance of the Purple Flag launch cannot be over emphasised and every business within the Purple Flag designated zone must do their bit to get the message out to their customers and the citizen of Waterford.

Yet getting this message out seems to have had varying degrees of success. I know that the Waterford Business Group have held an information evening and the Council did likewise yet the level of awareness is much less than it should be from a business point of view. How can you expect members of the public to be aware of the messaging if the businesses delivering that message are not clear themselves?

Clarity of communication messaging is something many business and organisation overlook or simply get wrong time and time again. When dealing with a stakeholder group the clarity of messaging becomes even more important and just because the people involved in a project are clear of the messaging it does not follow that everyone else “gets the messaging!”

I was very conscious at the start of this week that many of the businesses in the very heart of the Purple Flag area were not aware of the launch, were not aware of the messaging, were not aware of how they were to promote the launch weekend etc etc. It was clear that Purple Flag businesses have been visited but to what extent was there a conversation taking place with the business to enthuse them to get involved. I am yet to be convinced that enough time was spent delivering this messaging!

To remedy the lack of engagement the Waterford Business Group have taken it upon themselves to get out and “pound the street of the City Centre” and deliver some very striking purple belly posters to all the City Centre businesses asking them to give a Purple Flag offering for the launch weekend. You should be able to see A3 purple posters displayed in many shop windows this weekend promoting a Purple Flag offer or just recognising that the Purple Flag launch is taking place.

The communicating of messaging by getting bodies on the ground is without doubt the most effective way and is often the only way of delivering clarity of messaging. To see the human face of a promotion will undoubtedly get more buy-in and will also make the launch of the Purple Flag more personal.

 

So well done to Fly VLM and the Waterford Business Group for delivering more good news for the City, the County and the wider South East region.

Now we just need YOU, the people of Waterford, to support the launch, so make a deliberate effort to come into the City Centre this weekend and seek out the Purple Flag offerings. 

The wearing of Purple is of course optional.