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Poulter Partners has been picked to promote a Government-sponsored

initiative to make Yorkshire and Humberside more attractive to companies

from other parts of the UK and overseas.

The capture of the Yorkshire Forward project coincides with the

announcement of six redundancies by the Leeds agency. The job losses

fall mainly in the account handling and creative departments, and are a

result of the restructuring following last year’s management buyout.

Nick Eggleton, the agency’s new-business director, is included in the

redundancies, all of which are voluntary.

His replacement, Tamarind Wilson, will take the new role of marketing

manager while continuing to run the agency’s Hewlett-Packard

business.

Her brief will be to help boost Poulter’s new-business record which the

chairman, Richard Lewis, acknowledged had been indifferent during the

past year.

Lewis said the redundancies were not because the agency was in

difficulties but because the new structure, involving multi-disciplined

account handling and creative teams, had enabled some cost-cutting to

take place.

’I have to ensure we generate pounds 4 million of income a year,’ Lewis

added.

’If I can improve on that, so much the better.’

Yorkshire Forward is the first of the former regional development

agencies to launch a rebranding initiative after the Government’s

backing of its ten-year economic strategy plan.

Its aim is to distance the region from what Richard Gregory, Yorkshire

Forward’s deputy chairman, described as the ’grim images of

post-industrial deprivation and dereliction, to the old-fashioned

nostalgia of Last of the Summer Wine’.

Instead, the new campaign will concentrate on the fact that the area is

the second-largest financial area outside London and boasts excellent

shops and restaurants.