Campaign launches to make city cool to young people

The campaign hopes to attract more 18 to 44 year olds without children to Norwich

A new campaign has launched to encourage young people to visit a "maverick" city.

'Old City, New Attitude' by Visit Norwich hoped to attract "pre-nesters," or people aged between 18 and 44 without children, to the Norfolk region.

The promotional video featured a poem about the "welcoming, whimsical, wild" city, as well as areas that made Norwich "unique", such as the historic market and the Cathedral. It also highlighted contemporary attractions.

Visit Norwich's Mel March told BBC Radio Norfolk: "We wanted something really powerful. We wanted to pull out all the things that make Norwich so wonderful."

As well as Norwich's medieval areas, the campaign showed the modern side of the city, with Community East's skate park in St Peter Parmentergate Church and Plantation Gardens.

"Norwich wears medieval really well, but it's complemented by contemporary," Ms March said.

"We want to put forward this time-travelling idea of journeying 900 years in a day, because that's what you can do here.

"You've got the Norman castle at one end, and the Norman Foster at the Sainsbury's Centre at the other."

The promotional video features both historic and contemporary aspects of the city centre

Ms March said the campaign aimed to inspire people and show them what the city has to offer.

She said: "Our job is to show people what they can do here, to give them things that they weren't expecting.

"When you go to a new destination, you want to discover more than you've got at home, and you want to do different things."

Stefan Gurney from the Norwich Business Improvement District said that the campaign had reached 300,000 people within its first week.

"One week in, we've already seen 65,000 organic hits just on Instagram and 8,500 click-throughs," he said.

The team at Visit Norwich said they hoped to change perceptions through the campaign

Mr Gurney said they had decided to focus on the "pre-nester" demographic as research showed that they had no "preconceptions of Norwich".

"The standard knowledge [of the city] is Colman's Mustard, the UEA [University of East Anglia] and obviously the football team as well.

"We can try to change perceptions, and that's the demographic that are very able to move, to come to different places, to see things, and have the time and some of the disposable income to make those decisions."

He said that the video was made to highlight how Norwich was perceived by its residents.

"When people see the advert, they relate to that as a space that they understand Norwich to be and how they would like it to be perceived outside Norwich.

"We need to change perceptions to get people here."