Brigade tactics need to hot up

Your article of August 12, “Fire Service fails to win sponsorship” should have axiomatically read “fails to decide on sponsorship” within a reasonable time, because at time of my writing, my company has tabled two separate sponsorship offers with the London Fire Brigade (LFB) worth an aggregate £1.3m.

To clarify matters, it should be noted that my company was engaged to secure sponsorship for the LFB in February this year, after a two-year constant dialogue with it and following the failure of the COI to produce any offers within its nine-month exclusive contractual term.

Further, I did warn the LFB of the likely impact of the Millennium Dome sponsorship demands et al back in July 1997, so it is now comforting to learn of its acknowledgement.

I consider that the LFB and its agency have failed initially because neither had structured a saleable sponsorship package/platform – something I did at the start and was thereby successful in delivering the two sponsorship offers after only eight weeks.

Where the pitch becomes “diabolical” is when the LFB received its first “exclusive” offer from one of my clients on June 11. The LFB has so far failed to make up its mind whether or not to accept this offer.

Given the offer was agreed to by the LFB head of sponsorship, then faxed to my client from LFB headquarters, duly signed on my behalf, the LFB has some explaining to do as to why it have taken nearly three months to make up its minds on an offer to which it had already committed itself.

LFB’s inordinate delay and failure to keep my client(s) adequately informed on matters has caused a minor default on what was originally offered. Such inept and unacceptable delays can only serve to extinguish the flames of goodwill that have taken so long to ignite in an otherwise highly competitive market!

Murray C Stott

Managing director

Database Publishing

London & New Zealand