#ThisIsMINE

On 16th June 2016, Paul Lancaster wrote an article in The Journal newspaper explaining why we needed to do a better job of marketing & promoting the North East of England as a great place not only to live & work but to start & grow a business too.

He then started speaking to lots of individuals & organisations about how best to do this & began gathering support for two potential campaign slogans & hashtags for them to use when promoting the region:

1. North East England: #InventingTheFuture

2. #ThisIsMINE (Made In North East)

In order for this to work, he believed the campaign needed to be grassroots-led & community-driven & so he encouraged local artists & designers to turn the words into a more visual format that could be used online & on printed formats.

The first person to rise to the challenge was the super-talented designer James Hanson (Layers Studio) who created the following logos.

Initially it was just Paul & a small group of people who were regularly including the #ThisIsMINE hashtag on Social Media posts (primarily Twitter) but then Digital Union, the membership organisation for digital creatives in the North East of England, asked if they could start using it for their official marketing / media campaign.

Together with Digital Union & brand agency Everything Different, we produced some loose brand guidelines to help more businesses & individuals understand how they might use the hashtag.

Download the #ThisIsMINE branding guidelines (PDF, 9MB).

Hundreds of people now use the hashtag on a daily basis to celebrate & promote things that are uniquely invented or created in the North East of England.

There are two main ways we suggest you use the hashtag:

  1. Search for the #ThisIsMINE hashtag on Twitter to find out about some of the most interesting, innovative & creative businesses, events or entrepreneurial activities in the North East of England, especially in the tech / digital / creative sectors.
  2. Include the #ThisIsMINE hashtag at the end of your Tweets, LinkedIn or Instagram posts to be part of the collective efforts to promote the North East region. (We also guarantee to Retweet every Tweet containing the #ThisIsMINE hashtag from our @plandigitaluk Twitter account to help amplify your reach).

If you’d like to discuss other ways the #ThisIsMINE hashtag could be used, please get in touch.