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Earlier this year, I travelled down to London to see some old friends from my first job in the world of PR. With our gossiping drawing to a close, the subject of work soon hit the agenda. I’d never told some of my former colleagues that I’d made the move back up North and it came as quite a shock when I explained that by ‘North’ I did mean north of Watford. Bemused and slightly appalled, one former colleague added: “I didn’t know they did PR north of Birmingham?” After I picked myself up from the floor, I quickly made a point of correcting him. This wasn’t the first time I’d encountered these issues, I was once asked whether Northern PR’s wrote their press releases differently. I don’t recall ever starting a press release with an “eee by gum”!

Now I know London is the home of the national press, the seat of political power and a cultural hub, but there is life outside of the M25. Over the last few years, the North West has seen an explosion in the media, creative and digital industries with the fantastic MediaCity playing host to some of the UK’s leading and pioneering media professionals. The BBC’s relocation up North is a great example of this. The move was greeted with much dismay in the capital but it presented the North West with an opportunity to cement its place as the ‘new London’, the second home of the UK media.

In the PR industry in particular, there was once a myth that only London agencies could successfully mount a national PR campaign, but there are a plethora of Northern agencies that can quite easily blow that myth out of the water including us at Bell Pottinger North.  Today, geography needn’t be a barrier to PR perfection; believe it or not, we speak to national journalists every day, giving them national stories from a regional base.

Don’t just take my word for it; take a look at some of our work here http://www.bellpottingernorth.co.uk/case-studies/consumer/co-operative-energy/