Newspapers Draw Up Shortlists for Local Business Accelerators

Titles across the country are making their final decisions on firms to be shortlisted for Local Business Accelerators after 3,000 businesses applied to the scheme.

Titles will publish their shortlists on Wednesday (7 December) alongside the second of a series of three full page press ads created for the campaign by St. Luke’s. The ads are available to download from the LBA website. 

LBA has captured the imagination of business owners across the UK with more than 3,000 entrants putting themselves forward for the chance to win a substantial allocation of advertising in their local paper and mentoring from local business leaders. 

The campaign has been backed high profile figures including David Cameron, CBI director general John Cridland, culture secretary  Jeremy Hunt, the Bank of England and the Business Growth Fund. The LBA national ambassador is Deborah Meaden.

The widespread regional presseditorial coverage and use of the striking St Luke’s ads across the regional and local press has demonstrated the collective power of the medium in both daily and weekly titles.

The continuing LBA commentary on Twitter from regional and local papers, sales houses, chambers of commerce, local mentors, and small businesses themselves, also helped to spread the word.

Entries have come from a diverse range of business sectors such as retail, manufacturing, technology, arts, sports and recreation. The Hartlepool Mail’s head of features Chris Cordner described the paper's entrants as “strong and encouraging” and said how the chosen mentors were keen to get working with the winners next year and promote growth in the town. The paper's entries included a dancing school and a movie café where customers can watch films while enjoying a meal.

Cornwall & Devon Media will be asking their shortlisted businesses to make a presentation without the aid of presentational tools in front of their judging panel explaining why they should go on to the next stage. Participating titles will announce their winners on 11 January.

Trevor Lee, managing director at Cornwall & Devon Media, described  LBA as a “terrific idea” and said the publisher was “pleased to be part of it.”

Titles such as The Press are publishing profiles of their mentors and featuring businesses which have entered the campaign whie others such as the Derbyshire Times are trailing their shortlist announcement next week. Chartered accountants firm Price bailey highlighted their participation in the scheme with the Cambridge News. 

The NS website saw a surge of traffic during the campaign. During the entry period running from 19 October to 14 November, the Accelerate Me homepage attracted over 24,000 pageviews from over 19,000 unique visitors.