Scott Dolling, group manager for tourism and promotions at Southend Borough Council, has appointed marketing consultancy The Together Agency to help create a positioning for the resort and move the town away from perceptions as a place where Cockneys head for a knees-up.
The destination of choice for generations of characters on BBC1 soap opera EastEnders, ‘Saarfend' is suffering an image crisis.
‘We know [it] has a perception problem,' admits Dolling. ‘When we undertake research, people say the resort is not that desirable and that it has seen better days. Our overall ambition is to pull together the different parts of the town into a single message promoting Southend.'
So is a rebrand of Southend the equivalent of planting a stale Flake in a soggy, tasteless ice-cream cone and calling it a 99? Jonathan Turner, director at The Together Agency, is confident that the repositioning can succeed, even though he too admits the town suffers from ‘negative preconceptions'.
One UK seaside resort that has palpably improved its perception over the years is Brighton. A tourism body, Visit Brighton, was launched 18 months ago with the help of local marketing agency Harrison and Co, and created its identity as the ‘city by the sea.'
But John Carmichael, marketing manager at Visit Brighton, warns that marketing can only take a town so far. ‘The product has to be there, and luckily in Brighton we have top-line attractions and shopping, which enabled us to do the marketing,' he says. 'You will soon get caught out if you over-market something, and expectations are not met.'
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