Dear Reader - Inside Harrogate Spring Water + unveiling the new 'brand' Harrogate

It’s not often you’re asked inside the boardroom of one of Harrogate’s leading companies with an invitation to ask the managing director, marketing manager and five key members of staff anything you fancy.

Then, it’s not often Harrogate Spring Water has a week in which it finds itself under new international ownership at the same time as coming under fire for its expansion plans from environmental groups it had previously enjoyed excellent relationships with.

So what did I do? I did what anyone would do in the situation, coughed a little nervously and then ploughed ahead with the questions I thought readers would want answered.

To be fair to managing director James Cain, brand manager Nicky Cain, and the assembled staff members, they made no effort to wriggle out of anything, even after I, perhaps, foolishly compared Harrogate Spring Water’s ultra quiet, state-of-the-art bottling plant to a “secret bunker in a James Bond film.”

As they carried on answering my questions about trees and money, the future of the company and the future of themselves, I made sure I was looking them right in the eye at all times.

The whole team ticked all the right boxes with commendable if, occasionally, slightly exasperated honesty.

It’s true, I couldn’t see what was in any of their hearts.

But it struck me that either I was easily persuaded or this Harrogate success story deserves a far easier ride than I or anyone else, has been giving them of late.

More delays hit progress on Harrogate's cycle path future

I missed the launch of Thinking Place in Harrogate on Monday night, ironically, because I was writing at home for this week’s paper.

In the early 1990s, a colleague at the Harrogate Advertiser once took great pride in telling me he was a “24/7 journalist.”

I thought it was a pretty pompous thing to say but that was a long time ago.

Anyway, I can hear you wondering what on earth is Thinking Place.

It’s a good question. After nearly 12 months of talks initiated by Harrogate Borough Council involving a large range of groups from business, the arts and the wider community, not to forget paid consultants Thinking Place, the first fruits of Think Harrogate were unveiled in front of a gathering of the great and good inside Roosters gleaming new brewery.

Ta-dah! The ‘Harrogate Story’ was revealed.

Is it a campaign? Not really.

Organisers seem reluctant to call it that for fear of limiting its shelf life.

Rather, it seems to involve agreement on what aspects of the Harrogate district to push in an ongoing battle to boost shops, tourism and visitor numbers.

In another words, promoting the ‘brand’.

It has to be said Harrogate is one of the greatest towns of its size in the whole of Britain, perhaps, the greatest. Much the same could be said for the district.

Its strengths so massively outweigh its weaknesses as to make discussion irrelevant.

No one is going to argue against broadcasting such a positive message far and wide.

But great branding or not, it does still leave those weaknesses waiting to be addressed.

New faces at Harrogate BID and a positive new direction for town centre​