Liverpool: Third best
I’m inordinately amused by Liverpool’s new slogan: Liverpool: The UK’s third favourite city.
This appears in the new official city guide book, according to Liverpool.com, and will be splashed across 150,000 copies in tourist agencies globally.
The source of this proud claim? Conde Nast magazine’s Best UK Cities Awards, apparently, the recognised authority on the UK’s favouritest cities, I think you’ll agree.
It’s only a good job this source wasn’t used as inspiration for Liverpool’s slogan in 2003, when the city came 11th out of the UK’s favourite cities. Or a Daily Telegraph poll, which didn’t place Liverpool in the top six.
Sadly I’ve been unable to work out who the top two are, which is a pity because the suggestion that Manchester was voted in one of the top two spots is too delicious to contemplate.
I’ve stopped being surprised at Liverpool’s ability to repeatedly shoot itself in the foot, but this a cracker. What was wrong with a reference to the Capital of Culture or, much as it pains me to say it, Liverpool One?
And what’s wrong with Liverpool – The Pool of Life? Granted it’s a bit hackneyed, but Jung came up with that one, and it’s free.
Even a Liverpool: Calm Down would have raised a smile, as opposed to a nonplussed shrug.
Scousers rarely take too kindly to the idea that they’re second-best to anyone or anything, let alone third-best. That given, I can’t see this being a popular or long-lived slogan.
Although as a result of this excellent rebranding I look forward to LFC’s new slogan (Liverpool Football Club: Fourth best in the Permiership most years) and The Wombats’ (The Wombats: Worst anything ever).
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Don’t worry, they’ll have paid some ‘Marketing Guru’ a shitload of money to have come up with this!
If they’ve jumped in on a group discount, can’t wait for these ones:
Liverpool Echo Arena – ‘Not as big as the one in Manchester’
Liverpool One – ‘Same shops, different city’
and my favourite:
Everton FC – ‘Liverpool’s second favourite club’
I thought this was some kind of joke. Obviously, this being Liverpool, it isn’t.
Reminds me a bit of Birmingham, which is obsessed with being “the second city”, ahead of Manchester. When I lived there I could never get my head round they were so desperate to be second. The locals used to get very argumentative if you suggested they weren’t. Whereas in Manchester, nobody gives a toss.
“Scousers rarely take too kindly to the idea that they’re second-best to anyone or anything, let alone third-best.”
It’s chippy northerners in general mate. As recently as a few months ago I was putting up with sundry Geordies telling me Newcastle were a bigger club than ‘little Everton’.
Alas.
Ah, I see I’ve touched a nerve, though I’m not sure what the lexical difficulties of some Geordies has to do with it.
I’m afraid I can’t agree that the Liverpool condition is simply a generic Northern chippiness. I believe, and I think lots of people from Liverpool would agree with me, that there’s more too it than that.
Like people from Yorkshire, and Sir Geoff Boycott put it best himself, ‘we like to think we’re a little bit different’.
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