At the Motor Transport Directors’ Club on Friday, the focus was clearly on the reputation of our industry. The good and the great from across the transport world assembled in Birmingham’s Council House for a healthy dose of networking and to ponder on the thoughts of two speakers – Steve Granite, the 32 year old MD of Abbey Logistics, who has overhauled his company’s image and re-engaged with customers and the local community since his appointment in 2009, and also Alistair Campbell.
All cynicism about the new book launch aside (The Happy Depressive, published 12th January 2012), Alistair Campbell happily impressed. He based his speech largely on the questions submitted by the audience in advance, weaving them together with anecdotes from the Blair years, his own views on communication and the salient points made by Steve.
Alistair’s opening gambit was that "things are never as bad as you think, but never as good as you say" – a neat mantra that captures the importance of strategic communications. His observations began with our ‘shy, old fashioned’ image, pegged against some of the opportunities to communicate, such as greater use of our trailers for getting the message across. "You need to explain what you do", he said, meaning the key role we play in the UK’s economy. And the changing media landscape should provide plenty of opportunities. Now there is no doubt that a certain series on Channel 5 that shall remain nameless does help to put our daily grind into layman’s terms and even generates interest, but social media too must have a role to play, given that it’s all about sharing information. Alistair himself was tweeting during lunch (how rude, does the man never switch off?) showing that it has simply become a way of life.
His advice to start with four interesting facts about the industry shouldn’t be too much of a challenge….the UK logistics industry is worth £74 billion to the UK economy and employs around 2.3 million people, so employs 1 in 12 of the total workforce. There are three for starters.
But his point was that if changing our image IS important to us, then we should strategise this. His story about a room full of sports industry supremos sitting squabbling in front of Tony Blair made a serious point. We would need a plan and a single voice. So rather than talking about ‘collaboration’ in transport, perhaps the lesson to us is that we should think instead about ‘walking the talk’ and collaborating on ‘softer’ issues that affect us all. The Motor Transport Directors’ Club was set up with this very objective, so with Alistair placing the ball firmly in our court, it will be interesting to see if we can agree on the agenda (be it career choice, industry skills or image) and take this forward together.
* Skills for Logistics, 2010
The Wincanton Team