Time to lust after Northampton
ON Valentine’s Day LoveNorthampton was launched.
It’s a website which aims to remind us all what’s good about the town and in the process attract new businesses and visitors to the area.
Northampton Borough Council is joining forces with the town’s major venues, sports teams, businesses and institutions to, you know, “shout” about the good things going on.
There are offers, competitions and a lot of good information about attractions. It does occasionally pop its buttons with enthusiasm.
Good old Royal and Derngate is credited on the site with rivalling the West End and in another section visitors are promised world class theatre and music 365 days a year. Rivalling the West End? World class 365 days a year?
I suppose I mostly do my theatre-going at the Royal and in truth I am completely free to go to the West End of London, so in that sense it does rival it. It also rivals Broadway.
And to be fair the world class status of the general entertainment on offer is justified by the fact that we are all citizens of the world. I’ve said it before, they come from all over the world to live in Semilong (which rather makes a mockery of the high house prices in some of the posher villages).
I’m not knocking LoveNorthampton. Love can and should be a little blind.
There is a lot to love about Northampton and its always hard to quantify these things, especially if your stated aim is a kind of internet dating campaign with anyone in the country who is likely to be spending money in the next 12 months.
That’s why I’m wondering if a slightly different tack might be more effective: how about LustNorthampton?
Now don’t panic, I am not suggesting we rebrand and relaunch the red light area or expand Urban Tiger into an Urban Wildlife Park.
I simply think that if we are trying to entice visitors and investment over the internet then talking about Love before the first date might be a little too much.
It’s a delicate balance.
We don’t want to be needy Northampton but we shouldn’t be “look at the size of my lift tower” either. It’s there. It speaks for itself. We can be confident it will be noticed in photographs.
There is nothing wrong with a classy brasserie pushing things upmarket but visitors understand that kind of frippery doesn’t happen every night.
Maybe we should also hint that it’s OK to be in and out of town quick because we’ve got work in the morning.
Yes we all want a nice rich business person to come along one day, make us an offer we can’t refuse and set up the company headquarters we have all been dreaming of.
But while we are waiting there is nothing wrong with showing the day trippers a good time because let’s face it, you can get old waiting for Chairman Charming.
This is not about love. This should be more of a civic saucy wink and an “ooh, nice car” to motorists on the M1.
Cheap and mucky are harsh words, although if you are looking for a development site with competitive costs because it’s an enterprise zone then it’s a great place to start. And rest assured, no-one will remember how cheap and mucky it was once you have smartened it up.
LustNorthampton might just work. I have a slogan: Visit Northampton – Go All The Way!
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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