Tell me true, Mr J, why exactly do you do How-do...?

To say the North West of England was crying out for a new marketing and media web portal would hardly be akin to maintaining that it was crying out for a new guitar-based rock band with big hair and flares or a new city centre canal side café bar. But nor would it be apt to say, in the words of the almighty Tap, that it “filled a much needed gap”.

The truth, as is so often the case, lies rather dullishly in the middle.

Manchester has long been the UK’s second city of advertising and PR and, latterly, I dare say, design, too. It has understandably lagged behind Glasgow and Edinburgh as a broadcast and print centre, but its marketing communications credentials have remained sturdy.

With the advent of a mass enforced move by sundry BBC departments to sunny Salford, Manchester is truly moving to become a media force worth reckoning with in a way it has not been since the sixties. Technology and fashion then led national newspapers out of the city, whilst exactly the same forces, with a smattering of political expedience, have now driven broadcasters in.

Against such a backdrop, the mighty Nick Jaspan has chosen to launch his regional marketing web-portal - www. how-do.co.uk. Nick’s last enterprise was the sadly doomed North West Enquirer, launched and shut, with equal amounts of hyperbole, over the spring and summer of 2006. By comparison, how-do seems a modest enterprise.

The failure of Nick’s attempts to establish the Enquirer last year will see him as damaged goods by many in the cynical “best not to try, rather than risking failing” North West media world (a prevailing attitude that I suggest pre-doomed the Enquirer to a lack of local support in its vital first six months!). However, to others it will have raised Jaspan to a different level of awareness within NW business circles and certainly given him added gravitas as a North West media player (although admittedly a bloodied if unbowed one).

So will it work? As a venture, it’s comparatively low-cost in terms of launch. Most of the traffic will have been driven by Andy Spinoza’s PR campaign for the site, rather than by any off-line advertising. The contributors to the site, I dare say (aside from a sub and web designer) have worked on it as a labour of love.

The launch outlay then (and I’m only guessing here) is modest, but then so too, I guess are the rewards at present. The site carries a few banner ads, but nothing that would cover Mr. Jaspan’s lunch bills let alone provide a major financial foothold for expansion.

So what is behind Mr. Jaspan’s plans? Well, I suppose, there will be some potential revenue from branded training schemes, awards and events. To my mind, recruitment – the only reliable recruitment stream in this market place would be key.

With The Drum now increasingly paying only lip service to the city (both in terms of presence and coverage) and its team of pliable pre-pubescents hardly capable of demonstrating any great insight into the market and its future developments, the way is certainly open for another medium to grab reader attention and the still valuable recruitment market.

At present a would-be recruitment advertiser has three options – the Manchester Evening News, the London-based trade press or The Drum. All three have enormous drawbacks – the MEN is expensive and guarantees any recruitment advertiser in the “sexy” marketing communications and media sectors a score of wannabes and little else in terms of response

The London-centric trade press (Campaiagn, PR Week et al) have prohibitive page rates, an almost exclusively Soho-foccused readership and a subscription price beyond the pocket of target recruitees (account execs, studio managers, junior copywriters etc).

This has rather left The Drum to have the market to itself – the untimely demise of Adline (of which more in the near future), left outside of London recruitment an easy target for the Glasgow-based Carnyx Group (publishers of The Drum), but with their typical foresightedness, they managed two coups:

1) Firstly a push for subs (meaning that in most companies nobody now receives a copy and in the few that do it is only the chief exec and the head of new business that – neither prime targets for the likes of Suits, Orchard or even, god bless him, Peter Leonard)
2) Secondly they managed to alienate former Adline MD, Debbie Brown, (probably the person with the single best grasp of the highly fragmented regional recruitment market) to the extent that she stomped out of the Carnyx boardroom last year. Good move Gordon and Diane Young, the Statler and Waldorf of marketing publishing!

But I digress; I somehow suspect that even the lucrative recruitment market is not the key to Jaspan’s plans.

I think the clue may lie in the “how-do” name he has chosen for his new venture. Other commentators have commented on its Northern quaintness, but few have picked up on its flexibility in terms of extension into other markets (legal, financial, surveying, property etc – in fact anything in the business-to-business arena.)

“How-do” combines Northern-ness, networking and insider info (“How do I…? etc). I somehow suspect that a lack of support from the advertising and media community sank Nick’s last venture. By surreptitiously getting those same people on board very early in this embryonic new endeavor, he maybe heading them off at the pass and ensuring future support in other more lucrative markets…

But then, howdthefuckidknow.(co.uk) anyway?

(Well, even if I'm wrong, Mr J - it's not a bad plan now, is it?)