Visit Essex hopes new TV adverts will challenge stereotypes

Essex's tourism centre wants to show the variety the county has to offer

A council has invested in national TV adverts in a bid to change perceptions and challenge stereotypes.

Essex County Council's tourism arm, Visit Essex, also hopes to attract more visitors with the adverts.

A rebrand of the county's £3.4bn tourism industry has been going since 2019, with a new focus on the diversity of the county.

Lisa Bone, strategic tourism manager at the council, said it needed "a new narrative".

The new adverts are due to be aired on Sky in March, reports the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Ms Bone told the council's Place Services and Economic Growth Policy and Scrutiny Committee that stereotypes, including those popularised in the television show The Only Way is Essex, will remain the default if they are not challenged through effective marketing.

She said: "There's lots of talk about the way that the media talks about Essex but in my opinion if we don't tell them what we want them to say about us then they're always going to talk about this in a certain way. So we need to give them that new narrative.

"It's very much about trying to challenge the stereotypes to get people to think about Essex in a slightly different way and much more than in the context of just visiting, but about positioning Essex because it's a great place, not just to visit but also to live, work and invest."

Figures show that Covid badly affected tourism in Essex - with £1.6bn generated from the sector in 2020 compared to £3.5bn in 2019.

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