North East agency spending branded ‘obscene’

Apr 17 2009 by Adrian Pearson, The Journal

‘We are trying to spread the region’s message’

DEVELOPMENT bosses at One North East last night stood by their decision to spend up to £240,000 on “media monitoring”.

Stacy Hall, director of communications and tourism, said: “The scope of our role means we are responsible for promoting the region both locally, nationally and internationally, work that could not be monitored cost effectively from within One North East, especially given the global reach of the internet and online communications.

“We are trying to spread the region’s image across the globe into countries like Australia and New Zealand through the Passionate people, Passionate places campaign’, to attract more tourists to visit the North East.

“It is vitally important that we are able to monitor what our spend in these markets is achieving, as well as our investments into economic regeneration in the North East.

“We have issued the tender over a three-year period to keep costs down, placing a cap on the amount that can be spent on this service. We don’t envisage spending all of the tender amount: this sum is based on high-end industry costings and allows flexibility in what we actually spend.

“As a publicly funded organisation, we are committed to informing taxpayers how we are investing our budget in the most cost effective way. The media play a key role in this and we need to monitor this coverage to demonstrate the effectiveness of our work.”