Brown returns to lead Marketing Liverpool

Chris Brown, chief executive of Marketing Cheshire, will leave to become the first boss of Marketing Liverpool, a new agency within Liverpool Vision, in January.

Brown worked in Liverpool previously at The Mersey Partnership before moving to Chester eight years ago to run Visit Chester and Cheshire. He spent five years at TMP, holding senior roles including tourism director, operations director and had a spell as interim chief executive, filling in between Tom O'Brien and Robert Crawford.

Marketing Liverpool will be established within Liverpool Vision, the city's economic development company and part of the council, to promote the Liverpool brand nationally and internationally, working closely with Culture Liverpool.

Cllr Joe Anderson, mayor of Liverpool, said: "Chris Brown is an outstanding and experienced campaigner and stood out from an excellent list of candidates.

"I asked Liverpool Vision to create Marketing Liverpool with a remit to lead the city into a new era of greater international recognition and Chris Brown will have a mandate to think of the best ways to promote the Liverpool brand more effectively to compete on the world stage.

"In recent years our events and conferences have made a real economic impact while our attractions and our people have already made Liverpool a compelling destination.

"Yet if we are to ensure Liverpool's rightful place as one of Europe's great cities we need to maintain and accelerate this momentum."

In July 2004 Brown was appointed chief executive of Visit Chester and Cheshire, the tourism board for Cheshire and Warrington, which became Marketing Cheshire in April 2011.

Brown said: "Liverpool has changed greatly over the past eight years, but what remains the same is the unerring belief that it is a special place and it's one that I share.

"It will be my task to capture that and marry it to Liverpool's story of renewal and tell a new tale of opportunity and possibility to national and international markets to encourage more investors, more tourists and more businesses to visit, return and stay.

"The key to this will be creating effective private and public sector partnership arrangements to ensure that, under the one umbrella of Marketing Liverpool, we can promote the city through a combination of our new and traditional strengths and assets."

Brown will be responsible for delivering the Liverpool Plan – a series of transformational events designed to bring key organisations in the city together to raise its profile – developed by Liverpool City Council and Liverpool Vision.

Max Steinberg, chief executive of Liverpool Vision, said: "We have achieved a lot in a short space of time and our ambition for Liverpool grows with each success and we have created the Liverpool Plan to help achieve this.

"We have huge events on the horizon, including hosting an International Festival for Business in 2014 and I feel in Chris Brown we have someone who can persuade others to join us at it, while encouraging others to come and discover what Liverpool has to offer.

"He is a vital addition to the team working on promoting Liverpool with a well-deserved positive reputation in destination management and has a keen understanding of Liverpool and the challenges we face."

Your Comments

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That bonfire of the quangos went well didn’t it?

By Bosh

Is it just me or does Liverpool have more of these sorts of non-job chiefs on £100k than other towns/cities???

By Mush

Was he the one went out with Rihanna? He has really turned himself around!

By Mary Smiley

No problem with this. Neither Marketing Liverpool or Liverpool Vision are quangos. LV was rationalised and brought into LCC. ML will also be a dedicated in-house team. Cities don’t market themselves and most cities have similar arrangements. Marketing Manchester (a quango, I might add) does good work and this will be no different. If marketing is good enough for a private company, it’s certainly good enough for an entire city.

By MrM

Call them what you like…Quango, agency, newly created part of public sector (none are accountable to the electorate). It is a bit of a joke and a bit like musical chairs, everyone shuffles round onto the new chairs that have been put out. In short nothing changes…except the private and public capitalist get fatter and more brazen in their taking from the workers…

By NuCapitalist

Liverpool is a place worth shouting about for all the right reasons these days. I hope it brings with it plenty more success for the city.

By Cheshire Lady

Mary – a positive and industry related contribution. thanks for that. perhaps better reserved for when you are looking at the pictures in your favourite "gossip mag"

By ted

The point is not that Liverpool needs celebrating – of course it does – it’s the number of cooks and overlapping duties to serve it up. The LEP is the tourist board for a start. Liverpool Vision already has an expensive chief executive for another. And then there’s outsourcing events such as the business festival, tendered this week for a 20-month contract on a profit share whilst there are how many marketing people within Vision and a new events manager, Phil Southward ex of NWDA on £80k. can they not run the 2014 festival themselves? It’s a ludicrous headless beast and is worse not better than under Henshaw, Storey, Gill and co ten years ago.

By Mush

Meanwhile youth unemployment in the city continues to rocket. But never mind another well paid non job will join the elite corps gravitating around the esteemed city mayor and his court of cap duffers and talkers of a good game. A great city now going backwards again, how sad

By John brown

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