By Lynne Arrowsmith, Co-MD at Goldbug. Lynne leads internal communications and content strategy across employee engagement and brand campaigns.
It’s historically referred to as the Great North-South Divide.
But does it still exist?
For comms professionals interested in engaging audiences, the answer is a resounding ‘no’.
Goldbug’s Engagement Index 2025 reveals that the way people consume and engage with content has very little bearing – if any – on which city they live in.
Brits, wherever they are, picked the same reasons for engaging with the same moments that were scrutinised in the report.
That is: the more emotional the content, the more relatable and people-centric it is, the more engagement it strikes.
It is an important finding for anyone embarking on ‘regionalising’ their latest campaign or activity, whether that’s on the inside for employees or on the outside for consumers and the public.
It should help end the chin-scratching over whether something is too London-centric.
The index shows it is wise to not overcompensate regionally.
Who’s to say people respond differently to content in cities like Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Birmingham than they do in London?
In fact, The Engagement Index’s No.1 piece of content was created by Liverpool FC – a moving video with fan favourites Virgil Van Dyke and Mo Sallah surprising a six-year-old supporter who lives with a rare genetic disorder, Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome.
But this wasn’t exclusively loved and engaged with by Liverpool fans, or people in the north. The reaction was the same across every part of Britain.
Of course, this doesn’t mean we should do away with how we better connect with people in different regions, using locally-loved terms, phrases, inside nods and anything that creates a bond.
It just means that there is no divide when it comes to the things we all crave, no matter our accent or postcode: hope, love and happiness.