It's easy for Liverpudlians to get excited about the £1bn new shopping centre that is bringing 42 acres of shops and 5,000 jobs to the city, but what about the rest of the country? At the risk of sounding like Bob Geldof: Do they know it's shopping time at all?

Intrigued by this, I posed a question on Twitter asking if any non-scousers had heard of Liverpool One to see if it had gained national coverage. I didn't get much of a response although amusingly @jedhallam thought I'd been doing some freelance PR for the shopping centre. I haven't!

I'm really impressed by the Liverpool One website. It's not particularly innovative or exciting, but it works very well. It's packed full of information about the shopping centre, and news and photos about the building work. There's even a few webcams and a competition to find the most stylish worker in the city, which they've named the Liverpool One.

Displaying Press Releases as part of the website isn't unusual. However I think displaying the Media Coverage gained is, as I've never seen it before. The list of coverage hasn't been updated since mid-March but it still gives quite an interesting look into what coverage has been gained. Mostly it's been in local newspapers such as the Liverpool Echo and the Liverpool Daily Post, and trade magazines such as Retail Week and Property Week.

Some national coverage has been gained though.

There's been an interesting interview in the Independent with Joanne Jennings talking about her life as a Regeneration Expert. This is a clever angle for getting coverage and allows Joanne to wax lyrical about the shopping centre.

Another interesting angle that got some coverage in the Financial Times was to defend the building of a shopping centre when there is currently so much talk of a recession.

They also got coverage in the Daily Express' Property section by showing how the shopping centre was bringing new flats and housing to the city.

This is all the national coverage gained up until mid-March. I'm sure there has been a lot more since then as the grand opening will have generated a lot of media coverage. A clever move was to invite the Queen, and broadcast and print journalists, to visit the shopping centre a week or so before it opened to the public. This guaranteed that video footage and images of Liverpool One would make it into the news. Plus I got to see her and Prince Phillip arrive at the train station!


Whether or not all of this has actually put Liverpool on the map I'm not sure. However I like that they've split the development into two phases, therefore creating two occasions for grand openings and anniversaries in the future.

It will be interesting to see if they are able to gain as much attention when the second phase of the shopping centre opens in 117 days on the 30th September - my birthday! Repeating the same competitions and inviting the Queen back again probably wouldn't work. Perhaps they could invite a few WAGs from Liverpool and Everton football clubs as well as journalists to do some shopping before it officially opens. Or get a few up-and-coming Liverpudlian bands to give a performance on the opening day, such as the Zutons and the Wombats, as well as wheeling Sir Paul McCartney out again.

To prepare for my mum's 50th birthday party on Saturday, and the photo shoot with Alex Petricca, I went shopping in the MetQuarter in Liverpool today. I got a great new pair of jeans and a thin leather belt from Energie in their 70% off sale. I also got a stripy grey shirt in Levi's with £12 off. Bargain.

Also got a half price silk tie and plenty of balloons and what not for my my mum's party. I've even made some paper weights out of black paper, two pence coins and photographs to keep the helium balloons I've ordered in place.