Marketing Nottingham: JDI

Delicate, complex, tortuous.

Not exactly the three words you'd choose to sell Nottingham as an inward investment location, but entirely appropriate to characterise the process by which a proper place marketing organisation has emerged.

While the news is now out that Experience Nottinghamshire, Invest in Nottingham and Nottingham Means Business will come together under the umbrella of Marketing Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, the process to nail down the final shape of the organisation is far from complete.

The status of the different organisations means there are all sorts of employment and financial issues to resolve, political sensitivities to accommodate (this is a body that has to visibly serve city and county), and a significant degree of independence to establish.

Achieving that is going to require an experienced, respected, yet firm and forensic pair of hands. Nottingham City Council, which has played the driving role, knows who it would like to chair this process. But a key challenge for the person in the hotseat will be demonstrating to the rest of the county that this isn't going to be some metropolitan fix.

There is also a job to do in convincing politicians and businesses that a body with a very broad portfolio of responsibilities - it takes in everything from bidding for multi-million inward investments to promoting shire B&Bs - can still have a clear focus and a consistent message.

The bigger picture is that this is an organisation which needs to hit the ground running. The marketing of the city and county lags beind that of other major conurbations, and Marketing Nottingham will emerge at a time when the devolution agenda means cities in partcular are sounding an ever-louder drumbeat about their appeal as investment locations.

What's more, both city and county have significant unfulfilled regeneration opportunities - and the clock is ticking loudly on the current economic cycle.

Some close to the process - and many in business - have been more than a little frustrated at the glacial  progress. After all, the need for an organisation which marketed both city and county to businesses and tourists was identified years ago.

But the opportunities it can pursue haven't gone away. And constructing a narrative around them which is flexible enough to serve different purposes really isn't difficult.

Tortuous as this process has been, it's neither here nor there in terms of marketing Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. This is all about the message - and making it happen. JDI, as they say.

The blog gets back into gear!

For a daily hack this is a shame-faced admission: this blog has been dormant for nearly a year.

May be it's a measure of the way the world's picked up speed in the last 18 months or so, may be it's a reflection of the competing demands of work and family life, but there's been so much other stuff going on that filling a quiet moment with yet more wordsmithery has been the last thing on my mind. I think a few other bloggers have felt the same way.

Enough of the excuses and back to business, for that's what this blog is: a mix of musings on business which don't fit the template of the day job and musings on stuff that I find interesting - my business, if you like.

So we'll get back into gear with some of the latter. Quite literally, infact, as this blog marks a farewell to the trusty old warhorse that is my Volvo. Affectionately known as Kurt (as in Wallander, the Swedish detective), it's the kind of car that conforms to the classic Volvo cliche: a big, lumbering but always dependable V70 estate. Adding further to that veneer of endearing respectability is the fact that it's also a family hand-me-down, having spent the first few years of its life ferrying my wife's aunt and uncle to and from golf clubs in Surrey.

It had got a modest 60,000 miles on the clock when I got my sticky paws on it and dragged it up to Nottinghamshire. It will be traded in a couple of weeks from now with 111,000 on the counter. It's in good nick, so I'd reckon that there's another 100k in it with some careful fettling.

Much as I've enjoyed wafting around in something that's like a pair of old slippers, it's now a car from another era. It's big, heavy, has a large turbo petrol engine and a five-speed automatic slushbox. It's been great for cruising around in...but 200bhp in a heavy car is painfully expensive to run.

How painful? Try this: urban fuel economy is 18 mpg. Car tax is closing in on £300 a year. And its age (first registered in 2001) means it's had to have new hips and kneecaps. I still love it to bits. But it's probably time to pass it on to someone who doesn't do so many miles.

And time for me to take advantage of the huge technical leaps and bounds that have taken place since my V70 first hit the road.

Just how much motoring efficiency has improved can be seen in Kurt's replacement. Its petrol turbo engine is a litre smaller and 60bhp less powerful. The car itself takes up just as much road space as the V70. But its urban fuel economy is more than 46 mpg. Its 134mph top speed is the same as the Volvo. And its emissions are such that in the first year I will hand over no car tax whatsoever to George Osborne, and only £30 a year after that. Whoopee!

That astonishing performance is partly down to the fact that the car is significantly lighter than the Volvo, but also because of a remarkable automatic gearbox known as DSG. This Double Shift Gearbox has seven speeds and not one but two clutches.

In a normal gearbox, the clutch has to disengage itself from one gear and then engage the next, which takes time and uses juice. With the DSG, the first clutch engages one gear, while the second is already lining up the next cog. Shifts happen in milliseconds and the end result is that the auto version of this car is more economical than the manual.

The car also has a few other gizmos which weren't around when my V70 first hit the tarmac. The brakes come on automatically if the car detects an impact, a fatigue sensor sounds if the car spots odd steering inputs, multimedia is controlled via touchscreen, there's even a driving mode selection which allows you to tailor climate control, engine torque, accelerator, power steering and gearbox to suit your own needs. There's also self-parking system on some models.

So, I'm obviously a lucky boy and the posh gods have smiled on me, right? Wrong. One of the biggest changes to have taken place over the past 10-15 years is that some of the badge snobbery that used to decide your pecking order in life's traffic jam has faded, replaced instead by a respect for smart choices.

In other words, this technical marvel is a Skoda.