After housing the biggest media centre to date, Gary Payne,
Director of the Westminster venue, and Chairman of the MIA, talks
frankly to One Great George Street’s Wendy Greenhalgh about what it took
to win the highly-competitive bid, its legacy plans and what might be
next.
Was the bid competitive and who were you up against?
Fiercely
competitive would be a better way to describe the bid process. The
opportunity to welcome over 6,000 accredited journalists from around the
world into a Westminster venue is unparalleled. I know how we would
have felt had we not won the bid. So many hours were spent analysing
every detail of our bid proposal. I would therefore rather not name who I
suspect but in the first round we were up against twenty interested
parties. We were then fortunate to make the selected shortlist of only
three local Westminster venues.
What won the bid for One Great George Street?
Naturally
that was one of the first questions I asked myself following the
announcement. This is what Mark Howell, Associate Director 2012, London
and Partners said as the project lead for LMC: “The superb central
London location, range of facilities and décor combined with
highly-professional staff is why we chose One Great George Street as the
London Media Centre location and it proved to be exactly the right
decision.”
I would add that our MIA AIM Gold award, which is the only
meetings industry accreditation scheme was a helpful and highly-recognisable symbol of quality and service excellence.
Furthermore, our
commitment and flexibility to work with the GLA and the Mayor of London
to deliver the most accessible and sustainable media centre in the
history of the Games went a long way.
If you were asked to
give five points to Meetings Industry colleague on how to win a
lucrative bid such as LMC, what would your advice be?
1) Don’t be greedy, pitch realistically but bear in mind that low cost is not the top priority for every item
2) Don’t promise what you cannot deliver
3)
Relationships with stakeholders and looking after regular clients are
critical, look after both. For LMC we worked closely with the GLA,
Rushmans, L&P, Ether-Live and North One in particular
4)
Detail. I will probably never know each little bit of detail that was
key in winning the bid for us. Detail characterises one bid versus
another and it is something my team and colleagues tell me I am good at
5)
Plan for every eventuality. If the Mayor of London has committed to
delivering the most accessible Games yet and you are hosting a key
summit for the IPC, plan how you might cope if a significant number of
basketball wheelchair users need to access your purpose-built press
conference theatre at the same time. Our final count for press
conferences over the contract period was 87, a new record.
What was the LMC contract value?
Cost
was important to all parties involved. One of the reasons I am sure we
won the bid is that we did not set out to profiteer and walk away with
tinkling pockets. We have already seen an increase in pipeline business
that can directly be attributable to LMC. I have every confidence that
my teams hard work over the summer will be offset many times by future
legacy revenues.
What are your thoughts on legacy and what might be next?
Now
that we have played our part in delivering the biggest and most
successful media centre in the history of the Games and having achieved
exceptional media coverage, our focus will now be on prolonging the
legacy. But now the time is right to implore my team to engender our own
Olympic legacy. I see LMC as a rehearsal for projects of this scale.
Now that we have showcased our ability to the world stage, we are
encouraging past customers to reappraise our updated facilities and
enticing back new, high profile clients that passed through our doors
this summer.
What were your most memorable London 2012 moments?
Several
gold medals made their way through our entrance hall but meeting Laura
Trott, Michael Phelps and seeing all of their gold medals close up
stands out. Secondly overhearing one of the main sponsors describing us
as the best partner they had ever worked with and last but not the
least, the fabulous and well deserved holiday in Sardinia I have just
returned from with my family.
Any comments? Email conferencenews@mashmedia.net
