12/04/2010

An object lesson in getting your facts straight before posting to a blog

John Redwood has written what he probably thinks is a witty and topical piece about British industry in the wake of the failure to win the 2018 World Cup. He seems to think the 2018 World Cup bid failure is metaphor for Britain not selling things abroad in general. However, he undermines his whole argument by totally failing to have understood what the England 2018 bid was all about.

John Redwood states
What had happened to our market research? Such a brief meant either we should not compete, as it was not for us, or it meant a different vision for any UK bid. Why didn’t our bid concentrate on how we would spread the word, sell the tickets and the passion around the globe and make the World Cup relevant for countries without a great football heritage? Why didn’t we offer to  harness some of the future  huge UK Overseas Aid budget for football related projects in poorer countries as a central part of the bid?
Erm, now I was highly confused by Mr Redwood's statement. Having seen the presentation from England, it was clear that a fundamental strand of the England bid was the "Football United" project. Since England's bid required such a tiny investment due to the fact that the infrastructure is already in place, England had decided to invest in a worldwide football investment fund, Football United, which would spend as much money as Fifa does worldwide in investing in coaches, facilities and equipment for developing football in parts of the world where that investment would make a real difference.

So in short Mr Redwood, England had done their "market research", England had offered exactly what you suggested they should have done and exactly what FIFA required.

The only problem is Mr Redwood is that you either ;

A) Didn't bother to read what England offered
B) Didn't bother to watch England's presentation
C) Didn't bother to do any (market) research

Oh dear Mr Redwood !

3 comments:

Sten said...

You didn't seriously expect John Redwood to get his facts right did you ?

His track record suggest that this article of his is true to form for him, in my humble opinion.

English Pensioner said...

I think he was right. Any commercial firm carries out market research before bidding for a contract, and in this case I suspect that such research would have shown that however good our product, we would be unlikely to get the contract. This is quite common in the export business, where the best product and price still does not always make a sale. We shouldn't have bothered to waste money on the bid nor should the Prime Minister and Royalty have got involved.

Nich Starling said...

But that's not what he said.

he said market research should have meant that we marketed the World Cup in England as a World event, not an English event.

You are trying to rewrite what he is saying.

Pages