Creative Concern, working in close partnership with SKV PR, the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive (GMPTE) and the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities has had the good fortune to have been a key member of the team delivering a thorough and wide-ranging awareness campaign as part of the initial public consultation on the city region's proposed bid into the Government's Transport Innovation Fund.

As all businesses and residents across Greater Manchester should now be aware, the bid includes a proposal for a limited congestion charge.

The services we have delivered for this campaign have been: strategic advice on communicating with public and business; the arranging and facilitating of a 'Yellow Bus Tour' that visited every area of Greater Manchester; the preparation of printed materials and a website that allowed the public to give their views and opinions and advertising design for local papers.

We strongly stand by the use of stock imagery in the leaflet we prepared. To put out text-only communications is basic bad practice and as a cursory glance across even today's local papers will reveal, we all use image libraries to illustrate our work.
 
At no point has an image or example been used that claimed to be a real person in favour of the charge.  The leaflet portrays the experiences that four different commuters would encounter when travelling in around the city region post-2012 if he proposed changes take place.

We have therefore used the real experiences of people travelling into and around our city to give the 2.5 million residents of Greater Manchester a much better idea of what these proposals could deliver for them.
Creative Concern, not SKV PR, designed and produced the leaflets and the choice of photography was ours, in conjunction with our clients, not SKV's.

The written examples were prepared jointly by ourselves and the wider project team working on the bid. We stand by the examples, and we stand by the awareness campaign we have had the privilege to run.

Steve Connor, Chief Executive, Creative Concern, 11 July 2007.

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Comments (9)

1  By Simon B , on 12-07-2007 11:16 Your Quote    "We have therefore used the real experiences of people travelling into and around our city"    "Later the firm admitted the examples given were not genuine people at all, and no-one had been interviewed or surveyed to compile the leaflet"      So, no it is not based on real people at all.    Its four lies you told to 2.7 million people. Report