Pic: Edward VI indulges in a little re-branding of an already famous logo...

Pruning The Rose

Our very own Regional Development Agency - Yorkshire-Forward - steps out with a website, a mission statement and little respect for White Rose tradition. Phil O'Connor braves the thorns.

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Although theYorkshire Regional Development Agency have been around since last year they have finally stepped out into the limelight in a joint partnership with the Yorkshire Tourist Board. They have invented a Blairite alternate reality called "New Yorkshire". They are spending £300,000 on a drive to 're-brand' the county and improve it's corporate image at the Yorkshire International Business Convention to be held in Leeds this June. The talk is of course wrapped in cultish business jargon, and will be sugared by Leeds-based focus-groupers, but the message is pretty clear. Our traditional image is old fashioned, wrong-headed and bad for business.

The way that they intend to do this is to create a new 'brand'. Marketing Consultants will be busy creating a new 'look' which will involve a newly designed logo that the Tourist Board will insist is the way forward if we are to avoid turning into a third-world county. The emphasis will be on what a flashy modern people we are, with Internet cafes and cappuccino bars and shiny Call Centre / Brave New Workhouses dominating the landscape.

To it's credit the Agency, led by Graham Hall, is giving John Prescott - Deputy Prime Minister and once a proud Yorkshireman himself - a great deal of stick in order to get adequate funding for its key objectives. Business growth, higher

LINK

Yorkshire Forward

business birth and survival rates, inward investment, improved education and skills, community-based regeneration and environmentally--sensitive exploitation of the regions physical assets. In a county the size of ours that needs money, and Prescott has yet to deliver.

But what is deeply worrying are the signals put out by YF representatives about what these expensive Out Thinker types are up to. Jargon like 'repositioning' and 'branding' as if we are cans of beans. Snide comments about our traditional image being negative and damaging to business. Such things would have been a national scandal if uttered in Scotland, a country whose population is less than Yorkshire. The impression is of a bunch of people riding roughshod over a proud heritage, and working to undermine long traditions.

At risk is our 'national' emblem, the Rose.

There have been strong hints that both Yorkshire-Forward and Yorkshire Tourist Board are going to ditch the counties oldest most identifiable emblem - the White Rose - in favour of some "forward-looking and dynamic" graphic dreamt up by some southern design consultant (Martin Lambie-Nairn, anybody?) One look at YF's hopeless cog-like logo shows that this is no idle threat. It is a truly astounding proposition that in devolved and pride filled Wales or Scotland would have all responsible thrown out on their ear. In older days their heads would have been put up on York's Micklegate Bar for less!

Our Rose is one of the oldest and most powerful graphic devices in English History. It takes root in the badge of Edward I ( a golden rose) whose descendants varied it's tint to Red (the house of Lancaster) and to White (the house of York). Henry Tudor famously united the two roses into the Tudor Rose. The royal badge for England is still the red and white rose united,

England's Royal Badge

slipped and leaved proper! As a piece of graphic design it is a world famous heraldic device the transcends language and speaks volumes. It embodies a pride and a tradition that is second to none, connects Yorkshire both to a rich chivalric history and to national identity.

Everyone from a Japanese businessman, to a small child in African village school understands the deep value of images. Of local pride and a sense of worth embodied by a sign and symbol. In the Yorkshire Rose - a white five petalled Dog-rose within a cluster of five others, a seeded centre and five sepal tips - we have a living breathing modern symbol of who we are. Whether we live in Tinsley or Timbuktu this is at the centre of our sense of place, and sense of worth.

I can see that in a world of mobile phones, of global communication, such notions of pride wrapped up in a symbol must seem interchangeable. The world turns and meanings change. Why not throw away age old traditions and habits and reinvent the wheel. After all the pits are gone, and the mills are closed. Whose to notice?

But a quick look around and symbolism is alive and vibrant. And right at the centre of this is our old friend the White Rose of York. Take the new emblem of Leeds United Football Club, themselves no strangers to messing about with logos ( remember the Smiley logo of the Bremner era.) The club is intimately tied up with media interests at the highest level. Yet at the heart of their emblem is the white rose. Not the lamb or the owl from the civic crest but the strongest emblem of county pride. Any Leeds fan can tell you what that means to them.

Surely in the White Rose of York we have our greatest ambassador, an internationally recognised emblem that is of proven value. It can be found on ancient shields, on architectural cornices, in stained glass windows. It has remained at the heart of our enterprise since ancient times. Scrapping it now, at a time when regeneration is the spirit of the day would surely be a monumental step backwards, not forwards.

And you know what? If Yorkshire-Forward don't get this right, the people of Yorkshire won't be slow to let them know.

 

 

 

Selling Teabags To India

Tetley's, one of Yorkshire's oldest companies, and home of the Tetley Teafolk, has been taken over by an Indian company, Tata Tea.

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It's cost them a packet but the take-over of one of Yorkshires oldest companies - Tetleys is now complete. The new owners paid £271m for the company which now joins the other 85 companies in the huge family owned Indian conglomerate which employs over half a million people.

The reason why we haven't heard much of the company is largely due to Indian law which until fairly recently placed restrictions on Indian companies investing abroad. They are a huge operation with all kinds of businesses across the board from trucks and buses ( backpackers may know the Tata name from those Asian bus journeys - Yes, it's the same company) to coffee and spices. Another company they have strong connections with is Air India.

Tetley UK are world experts in tea acquisitions from countries as diverse as Kenya and Sri Lanka. Tata now have a major brand name to open up markets in areas they previously would have trouble opening up. All very global. I wonder what the Gaffer and his fellow teafolk would have to say about all this...

Tetley Teafolk Homepage where you can buy all sorts of wonderful Teafolk stuff including Wade figures and screensavers like this feller here. ( Hope Tetley's don't mind us borrowing one of their giffs for a bit...)