October 2011 Archives

Philippa Latimer attends an audience with retail royalty.

Early last week, my moment finally arrived. After months of colleagues telling tales of their encounters with HRH Queen of Shops, it was my time to be in the same room as Mary Portas. Excited? Palpably so. It's a young retail property public affairs professional's dream come true.

As it turned out, I was not alone in wanting to catch a glimpse of the lady charged with reviving our nation's high streets. Over in House of Commons Committee Room 9, some 40 or so MPs had gathered to pick the guru's brains. 

After initial statements from Minister Ed Davey and HRH MP herself, the merry band of MPs, representing high streets from Newmarket in the East to Redruth in the South West, fired question after question at the consultant and her business partner Peter Cross. 

Some of the politicians came with examples of local best practice, keen to see these and their high street promoted by the report.  Others came with desperate images of decline, anxious to receive the elixir of high street revival.

Mary's final report is due out towards the end of November/beginning of December. Prior to this, Mary has been keen to resist the temptation to confirm (or deny) proposals likely to be contained within. Last week's meeting was no different. She certainly alluded to the role of enhanced BIDs, the need for stronger rights for Local Authorities to seize empty/derelict commercial property, a rates rebate for new businesses, and a cap for the number of charity shops. However, none of the above is set in stone. 

Pick me up.

Mary's most interesting remarks came when discussing the need to re-align the fortunes of the high street with those of online retail. Is it possible that online retail, often seen as the enemy of high street shops, could really be a key part of the remedy? Mary thinks so.

Right now, ASOS, Amazon and Net-a-Porter are all looking for property on the high street. Consumers, unable to sit at home awaiting the delivery of their products, are keen for an easily accessible location to collect their purchases. One New Change already houses lockers for Amazon, and in the US Amazon has installed lockers across the 7-eleven convenience store portfolio. Houseoffraser.com will this month open two online order collection only stores in Union Square, Aberdeen and Liverpool One.

Mary believes that the evolution of these click and collection points is of paramount importance for the high street. The act of coming "into town" to collect products at a collection point will mean that consumers will have to begin to engage with their shopping centres/high streets again. This engagement, Mary believes, is utterly crucial. 

I think she's right. So right in fact that I am considering registering the domain www.pipmeup.com - watch this space for all your click and collect needs at an easily accessible location near you. 

Her appointment earlier this year was greeted with a fair amount of scepticism but having now met Mary Portas three times I'm confident that her review will add real value to the debate on the future of our towns and cities (I'm still hoping high streets is dropped for something more relevant!).

Journalists, industry experts, academics and policy wonks often share a mutual distrust of celebrity politics. From images of Bono and friends emerging from Number 10 in the Blair years, to asking people like Philip Green to advise on public sector efficiency savings, there is a sense that politicians are 50% concerned with the outcome of the review and 50% interested in how it portrays them in the public eye. But increasingly my view is all of us so called experts need to get over ourselves.

Think about the power of celebrity as a significant strength in your campaign armory. Consider the impact of people like Joanna Lumley in her support for Gurkhas rights or Hugh Grant, omnipresent at the year's political party conferences, on individual privacy post the News of the World phone hacking scandal.

Celebrity matters, whatever your personal opinion. Politicians know this. Despite Ed Milliband claiming to be more interested in policy substance you know his advisors would swap his intellect and moral superiority for just one ounce of Boris Johnson's charisma. Why? Because people care more about personality than policy, hardly a revelation but something those of us working in this world need to accept and embrace.

So what about the Portas Review? My opinion is its success will be routed in her understanding of her talents and limitations, a tremendous skill in anyone. Her creative thinking and understanding of propositions that sell is well established.  So expect ideas generated around creating and executing a vision for the high street, driven by charismatic leaders, to feature heavily. Her understanding of, and interest in, national planning policy, business rates, use class orders and CPO powers is evolving and she speaks on these subjects with passion too. But frankly she knows it's the boring stuff. And she's quite right, which is why she's been very open to getting a little help from her friends. I'm certainly pleased we've been invited into her gang, even if it's only temporary, because, as with many other celebrity campaigners, there's something about Mary...