Portsmouth Business School
Business students re-vamp image of local estate
Fri, 08 Oct 2010 12:14:00 BST
The Rowner area in Gosport has been given a marketing makeover by two Portsmouth Business School students whose goal is to transform its negative image.
Rowner was built by the Ministry of Defence for naval personnel and their families during the 1960s. Rowner Precinct, which was constructed to be the centre of the naval community, contains 301 maisonettes and flats.
It has suffered from a lack of financial investment which has seen the building fabric deteriorate over the past 25 years and remains in the top 20% most deprived areas in England.
Postgraduate marketing students, Elizabeth Franzky and Yulia Shvets, spent six weeks on a summer internship learning about the area and meeting local residents before preparing a pilot marketing campaign.
The students were sponsored to work on the project by the South East Coastal Communities (SECC), an initiative funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), to address regeneration needs of communities across the south.
They established a brand for Rowner, created a logo and a website, and drafted a number of possible marketing campaigns, such as ‘Rowner’s hidden heroes’, a campaign which aims to identify people who are very engaged in community life. The students hope their ideas will be put into action if they can secure further funding.
Elizabeth said: “We did a great deal of research because when you’re marketing a place it’s important to know the area well. On our first visit we went to the Rowner carnival and were told by a taxi driver ‘don’t go there’. We were worried about what we would find but were completely surprised – the community spirit was amazing. It was a great fun event involving all ages and we felt it was a shame the taxi driver had tried to deter us.”
“Over the years the area has been in the media spotlight because of its decaying infrastructure, lack of maintenance and resulting social challenges. We looked in detail at this negative coverage and asked people how they felt about living there. The majority of the interviewees said they loved it and felt disheartened by the bad press it receives.
“We soon discovered it’s people’s perception of Rowner that is the problem, not the area itself.”
The students are appealing to SECC to gain more funding in the hope of turning the pilot plans into a proper marketing campaign.