CLIENT: Ministry of Sound
PROJECT: Economic and cultural impact study of the Ministry of Sound
What were MAKE asked to do?
The Ministry of Sound is the world’s most famous nightclub. Located in a back street of London’s Elephant & Castle. Since 1991 it has grown from an underground music venue into a £100m global business that employees almost 200 people with its own events, radio stations and merchandising lines in clothing and electronics.
In 2007 planning permission was given for a commercial office block opposite the 1,500 capacity club. Ministry of Sound (MoS) were not concerned given that office workers would be long gone by the time its clubbers started arriving at 11pm for it club nights that often last till 5 or 6am the next morning, happily co-existing with other stakeholders locally. However, when the developer wanted to change the site into a 45 storey residential tower, it became obvious that the club would be under severe threat, with just one resident complaint about noise enough to shut down the club, no matter how internally well run it might be (and MoS is regarded in the borough as an exemplar operator).
MAKE, and its economist partners, were asked to use its ‘Night-Mix Index’ model to identify the importance of MoS to Southwark and London more generally; to put some hard economic facts behind the reason not to risk damaging an important local employer.
How did MAKE do it?
We used Night-Mix to analyse the composition and importance of the night time economy, in which MoS is the key player, to Southwark’s broader economy.
We analysed the MoS as a key creative business in the borough.
We analysed where MOS was in terms of the highest performing, fastest growing and most important firms in the borough’s key cultural sector (in the top 10 of all these).
Where MoS was in terms of its ranking of visitor and cultural attractions (in the top ten ahead of HMS Belfast).
And against 4 comparator night-time economies to establish if the night-time economy, and by default its biggest firm (MoS), was of particular importance to Southwark.
What happened next?
The research surprised even us. MoS was key to the borough’s (and London’s) night-time economy and global reputation as a world ranking tourism destination; one of the top 8 high growth and high income firms in all sectors in Southwark and one of Southwark’s top overall 100 firms or organisations in terms of employment. Given this list includes the headquarters of firms such as The Tate, RBS, Ernst & Young, PWC, Guys & St Thomas, why would anybody want to jeopardise such an important business, particular in a time of high unemployment and in particular a firm that employees young residents?
What unique value did MAKE bring to this project?
While most consultants would have been able to provide a general ‘borough-wide’ economic analysis for MoS, they would not have been able to provide ‘firm-level’ insight, rendering their work (like that of all economic consultants) general.
This is because they would need to rely on the Office for National Statistics’ own ‘BRES’ national survey of 80,000 firms. While this is a large sample, it pales relative to the 3.5m firms in the UK. Because our work with our partners’s own database of 3m real UK firms, this allowed us to get under the skin of a borough and work out just how important a single firm is.