Member Article

Iconic Midlands designs focus of ‘Birmingham Made’ campaign

Design and brand guru Alasdhair Willis is backing an initiative to showcase iconic designs created in Birmingham.

IDEA Birmingham, the business think tank, led by Birmingham City University, has brought together a group of influential business leaders to promote brands and products under the theme ‘Birmingham Made Me - The Original Design City.’

The project is set to be unveiled in the first week of April with an eye-catching, city-wide poster campaign, and almost 200 sites have been earmarked to promote the Design EXPO and Awards due to be held 15-22 June at The Mailbox.

Mr Willis, the man behind David Beckham’s new Bodywear range and global consultant for Adidas, has created the campaign messaging and design.

Designs such as the Land Rover Defender, AGA Range cooker, Pashley Clubman bicycle and Brooks England saddles and new hybrid supercar concept the Jaguar C-X75, are being held up as world-beating innovations from the Midlands.

Beverley Nielsen, director of Employer Engagement at Birmingham City University, said: “These, and a great deal more, will be on view at Birmingham’s first design EXPO in well over 100 years.”

The campaign has the support of Birmingham City Council and JCDecaux to promote the message.

Willis, husband of Stella McCartney, has been supporting the work of Beverley Nielsen and colleagues at Birmingham City University, together with Stuart Kendall, strategy partner at Cogent Elliott, one of the largest advertising agencies outside London.

Mr Kendall said: “It has been tremendous to work with Alasdhair and his team at Announcement Creative on the Birmingham Made Me campaign.

“We are so lucky that he has invested this time and energy into developing this focussed and beautifully-executed campaign.

“We need to accelerate our joint efforts to drive more business success and growth through increased collaboration.

“Targeting international markets, opening up new partnerships between business and education, focussing business into new opportunities for knowledge transfer with our great university institutions and gaining a greater reputation for our design excellence can make great strides in moving our region forward.”

IDEA group includes business leaders such as Ian Callum, director of design at Jaguar, who is the Founder Chairman, William McGrath, Group chief executive at AGA Rangemaster, Glenn Howells of Glenn Howells Architects, Adrian Williams, managing director of Pashley Cycles, Charles Morgan of Morgan Motor Company, Steven Green of Brooks England, Emma Bridgewater, other key Midlands brand leaders and Aston University.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .