'Marketing essential for Bulawayo revival'

BULAWAYO needs an aggressive destination marketing strategy to position itself for increased investment and reclaiming the city's status as the manufacturing hub in the country.

This emerged during Africa Communications Week commemorations organised by the Zimbabwe Institute of Public Relations (ZIPR) in Bulawayo on Wednesday evening, where discussants called for joint efforts between business, the city council and the media in painting a positive image about Bulawayo and showcasing its investment opportunities.

Bulawayo City Council senior public relations officer, Mrs Nesisa Mpofu, said the city already has a good reputation as the best run council and needs to build on its existing strengths to leverage growth. She said the municipality has come up with a number of incentives and business support measures to attract investments, which need to be communicated to all stakeholders.

"Bulawayo is a good destination for investment and it can be bigger. We need to engage and work on an effort to put Bulawayo back on the map. We should promote the brand Bulawayo, we need to be focused, work together as stakeholders to market our city and show who we are," said Mrs Mpofu.

"We have a reputation of being a well run city and an attribute of being an industrial hub, that reputation is there floating somewhere. What we need to do now is work on how to bring it back and make it into a tangible asset. So as various stakeholders we need to communicate in very strong manner. We can do this through communication in the media, interacting with embassies as well as one on one communications."

Nature's Healthy Kitchen managing director, Ms Patience Phiri, reiterated the same sentiments, challenging the local authority to communicate its efforts and making them known to businesses for investment to be unlocked.

She said good communication will bridge the gap between the programmes being crafted and how those are being relayed to the intended beneficiaries, adding that this was lacking at the moment.

"The question boils up to what council sees versus what business sees. I'm sure there could be programmes that the city council is doing but from a PR perspective, it's an issue of communication as in how much does business know about the efforts that council has put in place," said Ms Phiri.

"There could be strategies and policies that are being put in place, that probably provide a favourable environment for businesses but how much does business know about this, what communication has gone BCC to businesses."

ZIPR Bulawayo chapter president Mr Thandolwenkosi Nkomo said the local authority and businesses must utilise new communication platforms such as social media to market their programmes. He said businesses need to be capacitated to tell their own stories and market themselves to the rest of the world.

"Business should position itself as a story teller, and have communicators who are able to position the business as a story teller. The media plays a role of facilitating communication. We need social media platforms that celebrate Bulawayo business, tell the story of Bulawayo and the culture of Bulawayo. What we are saying is that it's critical for businesses to be capacitated to communicate," said Mr Nkomo.