This time it is the reunion of Sir Jimmy Savile with the iconic chair from ‘Jim’ll Fix It’, all staged at the venue named after Sir Jimmy.

The coverage ranged from local to national, broadcast to web and to print and from redtop to broadsheet.

And in every case, whether it was a photo-caption in The Sun or a report on the BBC local news, all of them made a prominent mention of the venue.

The marketing director for Royal Armouries International (RAI), which operates SAVILES Hall, reckons the coverage was worth around £250,000.

“The interest was extraordinary and represented an amazing return on our investment,” says Chris Owen, who spotted the legendary chair on Ebay. He reckons the total outlay was less than £5,000 – and that represents extraordinary value when a full-page ad in any national is currently well north of £20,000.
It was Owen and managing director Jim Vincent who came up with the idea for involving Sir Jimmy Savile. “We saw the venue as a place for entertainment and glamour and we needed someone from the city who could provide that Sir Jimmy certainly fits the bill and, when we approached him, was very keen to be involved,” says Vincent.
This type of opportunistic or entrepreneurial approach to marketing has enabled RAI plc to make its relatively limited budget punch well above its weight. As the venue has attracted ever more renowned celebrities, sportsmen and politicians to its facilities RAI plc has ensured that the news gets out to as many outlets as possible.
So, whether it is Darren Gough the England and Yorkshire cricketer having his testimonial dinner or Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, announcing that the UK is in recession, the name of SAVILES Hall would be included in the report.
That same savvy came into play in persuading Theo Paphitis, the Rymans entrepreneur made famous Dragons’ Den, to come to SAVILES Hall to launch a new ‘pracademic’ course in entrepreneurship – even though the course itself would be taught nearly 20 miles away at Huddersfield University. Again, Chris Owen was able to convert Paphitis’s celebrity status into column inches and broadcast soundbites that not only promoted the new course but also the new venue.
SAVILES Hall is not only Leeds’ newest venue but also RAI plc’s biggest investment to date as it cost £3.5 million to build and then a further £1.5 million to equip it as a supremely flexible space that could be transformed into anything from an exhibition to a society wedding to a black-tie banquet for 1,500 people.
So, when the Hall opened in June 2007, it needed to make an immediate impact upon the business as a whole, which functions as the corporate and hospitality arm of the Royal Armouries (International) plc. Now, just two years later, it is contributing almost ½ of RAI’s £5 million annual turnover.
Although Chris states he also use conventional marketing such as ads in the local press it is clear that his entrepreneurial flair is enjoying great success using newer and more innovative routes to market. The web, for example, is utilised both through social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube and through clusters of connected websites.
Chris explains; “The idea of the social networking sites is that all RAI sales staff have an entry and encourage clients to have an entry, the point being that if the clients recommend SAVILES Hall this will reach a market that conventional databases will not capture.
Similarly, RAI has created innovative methods of exploiting the internet to maximise the promotion of SAVILES legendary Christmas Parties which attract 27,000 revellers across the December period. The result is that Christmas bookings for SAVILES Hall now stand at over 8,000 bookings – an increase of 12% on bookings received at this time last year, despite the economic climate.
In another initiative, Owen is spearheading ‘showbuilders - a department in which its staff researches potential conferences and exhibitions that can then be sold on to events organisers. So far the department has signed up conferences for GPs, vets, the pharmaceutical industry and Personal Development – each bringing £100,000 of new business to the venue and a potential £250,000 to the organiser.
This marketing nous has not gone unrecognised in the region - Marketing Leeds awarded RAI the ‘Leeds, Live it, Love it’ award. The chief executive of the Welcome to Yorkshire, Gary Verity, comments: “RAI plc has demonstrated, over a number of years, that Yorkshire is an ideal destination for a conference, exhibition or banquet with innovative marketing methods that deliver value for money.”