Jayne Dowle: Selling ourselves as retail therapy destination

At the launch of a new advertising campaign to sell Brand GB abroad, the Culture Secretary went into raptures about how balmy our climate is. We have lower rainfall than Paris, he pointed out, just to make a point to the French. And with the kind of understatement that can only be British, he added: “It is not always as hot as New York, but much more pleasant.”

So, take that, you show-off Yanks. We’re not as hot as you, but we’re much more pleasant. That should well and truly put the “Great” back into “Great Britain”, and pull them in by the plane-load from the 14 cities in nine countries – including America, plus Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India and Japan – where the new £25m VisitBritain campaign is launching. Or maybe not.

This campaign is a great idea and, on the surface, it looks cool, with the Union Flag and all. If we can’t capitalise on 2012 with the Olympics and Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, then we might as well give up.

However I’m wondering if Mr Hunt has really got his head around it. This is a fantastic opportunity to bust every cliché going about what makes Great Britain a great place. And goodness me, we’ve got a few of those to tackle.

We do not, despite what Americans of a certain vintage think, all take tea every afternoon at 4pm sharp and speak like Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter. That’s the challenge isn’t it? To be proud of our traditions and our history, but to not present ourselves to the world as a slightly mothballed version of Downton Abbey.

We are global leaders in innovative fashion, cutting-edge art and cool music. We have buzzing cities, and within a few miles, gorgeous countryside. In fact, we have so much to offer, it’s important not to look as if we are trying too hard to please. So perhaps the best thing to do is to go for the jugular.

If you ask me, and if the evidence on London’s Oxford Street is anything to go by, a very large proportion of tourists come here to shop. If you have ever found yourself at the end of a very long queue in Marks & Spencer at Marble Arch, you will know exactly what I mean.

So, note to Mr Hunt, it is very important to brag about our shopping. And please don’t assume that all tourists want to do is stuff a suitcase with knickers and spend their yen in Edinburgh Woollen Mill. If you want them to go back home and rave about our wonderful retail opportunities to their friends in Osaka, give them a map of all the major branches of Primark, a guide to the best discount outlets – and we’ve got quite a few of them here in Yorkshire – and the lowdown on all those unusual little boutiques and specialist stores only local aficionados know about.

This will need work at grass roots level. But trust me, it will be worth it. And it will achieve your aim of making sure that it’s not just London which benefits from all the 2012 attention.

Frankly, our capital city has done a fairly good job of marketing itself over the centuries. As a result – and I don’t want to sound patronising – a lot of foreign tourists think that Great Britain begins and ends at Buckingham Palace Gate. The brave few might venture as far as Oxford for an afternoon, or even York, or gosh, Edinburgh. But to your average Chinese person on a first visit, a night out in Sheffield will be roughly equitable to a trip to the moon. And probably more daunting.

I’m sure that the clever people at VisitBritain are onto this already, but it would be nice if the Culture Secretary could prove he’s really with the programme too. He should be lying awake at night coming up with fantasy mini-breaks in his head.

I’ll get him started. What about a “Peaks, Pennines and Partying Weekend”? A couple of days exploring the wonderful scenery of Yorkshire and Derbyshire, with two top nights out, in Leeds and Sheffield, included, theatres, dinner, trendy bars, clubs… you choose.

I see that Mr Hunt’s own constituency is South West Surrey. I hope this doesn’t mean that anywhere north of Watford is foreign lands to him. If he really does want to put the Great back into Great Britain, he’s got to realise that we might be a small country, but we are a very big place.