THIS week we meet PHIL GORDON , the marketing brain behind the Dorchester Business Improvement District. View reporter PAUL CROMPTON talks to Phil about his success in marketing and his love of cricket.
“Most products were 95 per cent brilliant and five per flawed, so I thought it would be a real challenge to help develop that five per cent to make it 100 per cent brilliant, this is my dream job,” said the marketing brain behind the hugely successful Dorchester Business Improvement District, BID for short.
Having moved back to “his roots” from Berkshire to be closer to his parents, who live in Bridport, Phil Gordon has lived in Thorncombe for the last seven years, rekindling his love of cricket, which sees him today, sat in the village shop, for which he is a sporadic volunteer, with a broken thumb and tales of celebrity matches – including the 12 ball over by local resident Oliver Letwin MP.
Sipping from a cup of coffee at a wobbly table, Phil recalls how four years ago he started Kaaboom Marketing Services offering marketing, Public Relations and sales support for smaller and medium sized businesses.
He said: “I became aware when I moved down here there was a lot of excellent businesses in Dorchester, some of which had fantastic products and services and needed a little help with getting the best out of them.”
Following this move, the future project manager of Dorchester BID, was only an advert away from becoming part of what he refers to as a “business positive” town.
“My wife saw an advert in the paper for a project manager for the Dorchester BID, but I knew nothing about what a BID is or was and quite frankly I was not particularly interested in project management,” he said.
“However, I did a little bit of research and the more I read the more excited I got seeing what a huge opportunity for Dorchester, it was for us to take control of our own destiny a bit.”
A BID is a collection of businesses within a defined geographical area who vote to invest collectively in local improvements to enhance their trading environment, initiated, financed and led by the commercial sector, a BID helps provide additional or improved services as identified and requested by those businesses, to the baseline services provided by the local authority in that area.
All the businesses are invited to vote in a ballot on a business plan and basically that plan can contain anything suggested by the public of businesses to improve the town and make it a more viable place to do business.
“I really enjoy seeing a business achieve and people in that business actually benefit from all the hard work. It’s what keeps me going, turning passion into results,” he said.
“The important thing about the BID is that we were in the worst recession anyone can remember, certainly since the war, and in that time we lost 20 odd businesses including high street names like Woolworths and Adams, but we have gained over 35 new businesses in that same period, so Dorchester is actually business positive which is an amazing achievement I think.”
This influx of new businesses includes Wellworths, which has caught the country’s imagination, reportedly become a tourist destination in its own right, and the subject of a one hour BBC documentary, which Phil says, helped put Dorchester back on the map and the reason why people still flock to the town.
However, Phil is not a man who is satisfied with concentrating on one thing. After moving to the area, where his family tree goes back several generations, he decided it was the perfect time to build his own house.
So on moving to the area he and his family started their self build home, which he’d “never done anything like it before,” he said, adding “But it was a fantastic experience. I do feel from time-to-time when I walk through the door, I just think we really did do this ourselves. I don’t know how we did it, I was project manager and did a lot of things myself where possible, like a bit of plastering and electronics.
“It was a real experience, an emotional roller-coaster going through the planning problems, problems with access but the views kept us going.”
Of course, for a man with bags of energy, enthusiasm and drive, the transition from marketing and PR for Dorchester BID to fixing his own electronics is not a huge step.
“There were lots of reasons, “ he said of completing a five year apprenticeship at EMI, “partly because I’m a gadgets man, I like technology and electronics and back in the 1970s and 80s it was probably the best place to be. But I knew that if I wanted to make a decent living it wasn’t the best career. I wanted to get out into the ‘big wide world’ and so worked in electronics engineering 15 years.”
However, he said: “Once the house was built it became apparent I was too young and poor to retire and needed to do something; I like to be doing things and keep active.”
And so destiny called in the form of the newspaper advert and here he is today, sat with his second cup of coffee resting in front of him, becoming animated as he talks of the up coming Twenty20 cricket cup final, which, thanks to his marketing instincts, took the opportunity to link his love of the game with the BID by buying advertising space for the games at the Rose Bowl and other county grounds.
“I was given the opportunity a few months ago of an extremely cheap last minute deal for some cricket banner advertising,” Phil said, adding: “It gives Dorchester international exposure and brings the marketing impact of Dorchester to a wider, more global audience and allows us the opportunity to have Sky TV broadcast games with our message: dorchesterdorset.com - Discover our Secrets. There’s a good demographic of people going to cricket, look at the people going, it’s a good audience to target to get to spend money in the town.”
Phil said: “I love cricket. I’m competitive but I know my skill limits; I’d rather have a good game where you are not quite sure who will win it, but end up winning yourself. I enjoy friendly matches a lot, playing league games I find some sides are too intense and a bit un-cricket like, for me it’s not what the game is about.”
Having started around nine years ago Phil’s passion for cricket has seen him coach a number of Colts teams and managed the woman’s 11 at Axminster, Devon. And his infectious love of the game even rubbed off on his “long suffering” wife.
“She was fed up with me listening to Test Matches so since a few years ago, to my amazement, she said she would have a go and she has seen how much fun the social side of the game can be and now she’s a real cricket lover. The turning point was when I came home and found her watching the Test Match, and the look on her face when I walked in was brilliant.
“After that I knew the transformation was complete, and I thought ‘my work here was done’.”
No comments:
Post a Comment