Marketing manchester attacked by gay title
Stokes: under attack for EuroPride contract
Marketing Manchester has come under fire from local gay and lesbian title MAN magazine for it’s handling of “the biggest gay pride festival this country has seen – EuroPride Manchester 2003.”The magazine raises questions marks over why Marketing Manchester, a publically funded quango, has been given the contract to promote the festival in the first place. It alludes to the fact that this might have something to do with chief executive Andrew Stokes’ relationship with Jason Pollock, the UK representative for the European Pride Organisers Association (EOPA), the body that awarded the licence to Marketing Manchester in the first place.
The article then proceeds to highlight certain other connections between Stokes, the Europride board, the fact that the official holiday firm for EuroPride has Pollock as a freelance advisor and that the firm printing the listings guide is also run by a EuroPride board member. It also raises the issue of why Hemisphere, “a design company with a long established, and by its own admission, cosy relationship, with Marketing Manchester,” has been awarded the task of producing the EuroPride 2003 logo. Stokes was unavailable to react to the article as Adline went to press.