I spent an interesting hour at one of the MPA’s World Class series of talks last week, listening to Nick Johnson, chairman of Marketing Manchester, describe the origins of the “Original, Modern” line with which Manchester presents itself to the world.

Nick was amongst a group of property developers and architects whose affront at the weakness of the previous slogan for Manchester “We’re Up and Going” was such that they became known as the ‘McEnroe Group’…You Cannot be Serious etc..

MCing the talk was Michael Taylor, the editor of Insider, who pointed out that as the head of Marketing Manchester Nick had now moved from being critic to producer and invited him to describe that journey and in particular the genesis of the “Original, Modern” line developed by the designer Peter Saville, in his role as Manchester’s creative director. Michael has blogged about this previously.

That’s when things got startling.

Manchester City Council, to its credit, realising the awfulness of the slogan it had just launched responded to the McEnroe Group by deciding to hire a creative director to shape the image of the city to its citizens and the outside world.

A line up of candidates from New York, Barcelona and other cities was interviewed amongst whom was Peter Saville, most famous then and now for his work for Factory Records in the late 70s and early 80s.

Why was he hired? What were his outstanding virtues?

On this, Nick was unambiguous. It was because he was the cheapest and he was the cheapest because he was desperate for the work.

In any normal setting, that would be a deafening klaxon to thank the candidate for his trouble and show him the door, but this is the Looking Glass world of local government mixing with a persuasive group with a common interest in getting planning permissions for their property interests.

Nick talked for a bit about branding cities and Michael brought up the recent I Love Mcr campaign from Marketing Manchester and suggested that by being a direct copy of I Love NY it was the very antithesis of original or modern.

This was clearly discomforting to Nick who then said another extraordinary thing.

Clearly he thinks the I Love Mcr campaign is beyond poor, but his diplomatic instincts led him to defend it on three fronts. It was simple, people ‘got it’ and they could if they wished, do something about it.

He contrasted this with ‘Original Modern’ which he admitted was more of an intellectual ‘construct’ and said that people ‘didn’t really understand the strategy behind it’.

I took the opportunity in the Q&A to ask him to articulate this strategy because whilst I can understand Original, Modern conceptually, I don’t understand what I am supposed to do with it or about it.

Nick replied that it isn’t actually a strategy as such so I asked him why he said it was.

His reply was, to be charitable, vague and referred to an architect sketching out a broad plan for a property development and that this was what a strategy really is.

It isn’t and this confusion of an overarching idea or a vision with a strategy makes “Original, Modern” as useless as “We’re Up and Going” and actually inferior to “I love MCR”.  Which is saying something.

Nick gave the example of the Manchester International Festival as what Original, Modern is all about because it commissions new work.

Again, this is confused thinking. The MIF is bold and to be celebrated, but fundamentally, sponsoring original work by others isn’t the same as being original, modern. Get those two ideas mixed up and you’re in trouble.

Creating the Festival would be a strategically sound marketing move for a city which aspired to be original and modern, but it is flawed thinking for one that claims to embody these words.

Contrast the MIF with the International Violin Competition run by the RNCM. This may be smaller than MIF but IS an example of original, modern in that it attracts the world’s best violinists because the some of the world’s best teaching is taking place at the RNCM under the guidance of its head of strings Malcolm Layfield who combines this role with being professor at the Beijing Conservatoire.

I will cheerfully disclose that Malcolm is my brother-in-law but this does not diminish the point that what the violin competition represents is Manchester projecting itself on the world stage through world class work and skills being attracted to Manchester not because someone has written a big cheque but because of a world class asset already in the city that is plugged in at a profound level to the dominant culture of our time.

The crucial point is that the RNCM doesn’t need the permission of anyone to be original and modern, any more than Saville himself needed permission to change the way the world looked at a record label or a band. In this sense Original, Modern is just a slogan trying to connect things that have no connection, an irrelevance.

Nick said he thought Original Modern was more an economic development idea than anything else but how? Stick it on an inward investment brochure and businesses will ask, what does this mean in terms of supporting R&D, or skills development or evidence that Manchester knocks spots off other cities in terms of the vibrancy of its informal cultural and intellectual exchanges?

That was true once in the city in the Reform Club, the Liberal Club, the Portico but Nick is right in pointing out that these forums no longer exist.

Manchester has universities to spare but I have never heard of the city being defined by them. Hopefully that may change with the commercialisation of Graphene but this will happen with money from central Government rather than the city itself being bold.

It is troubling that the chairman of the body built around the phrase was unable to say how Original Modern translates into actions rather than words.

Ultimately Original Modern is an idea in search of substance. It is a hollow slogan and the truth of its weakness is that it was overshadowed overnight in August by a thousand flyers in shop windows, reproducing a logo copied from New York circa 1975.

The beauty of I Love NY was that it was a provocative, democratic, enabling idea. Original Modern is a subtle, intellectual wordplay that requires an understanding of 200 years of history and leads nowhere.

If you’ve got nothing better to do, watch Peter Saville spend 10 minutes failing to explain it.

It’s shame that no-one in the room back in 2004 had the balls to say “You Cannot be Serious”.