Working for the Land of my father (From Gazette & Herald)

Working for the Land of my father

Marketing manager Melanie Wood tells Claire Metcalfe about her rebranding exercise at Flamingo Land aimed at keeping the family together during visits.

As a director of Flamingo Land, 31-year-old Melanie Wood has impressive business credentials. She is marketing manager of the multi-million pound business, and this year alone she is undertaking a major rebranding of the theme park.

With a masters degree in Social Psychology and Business from Strathclyde University, she has a natural flair for marketing, and, she says, it would have always been her chosen career path.

However, she says she would not be doing what she does if it hadn't been for the tragic death of her father, Robert Gibb, after a car accident nine years ago.

"I would still have gone into marketing but I probably would have been down in London. I would have had more time on my own if dad was still here," said Melanie, who lives in York with her husband and two young children.

But now she couldn't imagine doing anything else. "I love my job and I think as much as anything it's because I know Flamingo Land so well," she said.

Her father bought what was then just a small zoo and fairground in 1978, when Melanie was five years old. "We spent all our summer and Easter holidays here as children, and then as a teenager I worked here for a summer job, so I know it inside out, and there couldn't be a more fun product to market than a theme park," she said.

Melanie shares the load with her brother, Gordon, 29, who is managing director of Flamingo Land, and her 32-year-old sister Vicky, who runs the family's other theme park, Pleasure Island in Cleethorpes.

Gordon has attracted a lot of media attention because of his youth and his strong personality. He bought Bradford City Football Club and featured heavily in a television documentary about the attraction. When asked if she feels in his shadow she said: "If I feel in anybody's shadow, it's my dad's.

"Gordon and I work well alongside one another. From the point of view of personality he has got the stronger one. I think there's always going to be a stronger one in business, whether you are related or not, and we push Gordon into the spotlight because he always knows the right thing to say."

He may know the right thing to say, but Melanie knows what she's doing when it comes to attracting people to Flamingo Land. Her latest move has been to rebrand and relaunch New Flamingo Land, raising the profile of the attraction's zoo, to bring it in line with the white-knuckle ride side of things.

"It's about keeping the family together," she explained. "In the past people have thought we were a theme park with a zoo attached, but now there is equality on both sides," she said. "There are height and age restrictions on some of the rides so it can mean that some members of the family spend their time watching others on rides, and they can't all join in.

''Having said that, the rides, of course, remain important and we keep investing in them, too."

The relaunch has involved the unveiling of new adverts, logos, and radio and television commercials.

New for 2005 at the zoo are two intense high-velocity attractions, Velocity and Navigator, as reported in last week's Gazette & Herald. Velocity is the first "motorbike launch coaster" in Britain. It has been imported from a Dutch company called Vekoma and will cost £3.5million to construct and rebrand.

"To get a UK or European first always is a good crowd-puller, so we think Navigator is really going to pull people in," said Melanie.

The zoo will also have some new residents. Five Asian lions, three females and two males, will become part of the wildlife that people can spot in the Lost Kingdom Reserve, and four chimpanzees.

Going from strength to strength year on year, the Gibb family have continued Robert's legacy with amazing vision and enthusiasm. It seems hard to imagine them ever giving it up.

"We never say never," said Melanie. "But it is in the blood, it has been my life, so to walk away from that is a big statement. Dad started Flamingo Land and as a result of that it is very important to the whole family."

Updated: 13:01 Wednesday, February 16, 2005