YORKSHIRE Forward, the regional development agency will prove just how forward it is in a brand new campaign to market Yorkshire as the place to be for business.

Over the next six months posters will declare "Yorkshire's got more balls", referring to the fact that the county beat bids from across Europe for Koyo Bearings' new £40 million ball-bearing plant in Barnsley.

A press slogan in the £300,000 marketing campaign which targets Yorkshire's traditional strengths as well as modern qualities will be "Yorkshire's Full of IT" - referring to the fact that the Information Technology sector in the region is one of the fastest-growing in Britain.

A poster declaring " e-by gum!" makes the point that about 33 per cent of all UK Internet traffic goes through Yorkshire and another, headlined "Yorkshire's full of bankers" makes the point that one in seven people in the county are employed in financial or business services.

The hard-hitting campaign, dubbed Alive with Opportunity follows the successful launch of the Alive with Opportunity brand launch at the Yorkshire International Business Convention in June endorsed by businesses like Asda, Yorkshire Bank, Yorkshire Building Society, Yorkshire Television and Yorkshire Electricity.

The poster and press campaign is designed to counter extreme perceptions of the region throughout the UK and overseas. Detailed research conducted by Yorkshire Forward showed that while the region had an underlying confidence in itself, it was not truly understood by outsiders, suffering from "persistent stereotyping and misconception."

At best, Yorkshire is credited for its beautiful countryside and the warmth, pride, hardworking and honest nature of its people; at worst it is relegated as "the land of Yorkshire pudding, cloth caps and whippets, populated by blunt, unsophisticated folk - a region lacking opportunity, rather than alive with opportunity"

Another false perception the research revealed came from the external business community which believed that access to the rest of the UK from the region was poor and the quality of labour, particularly in modern high-tech industry and management was limited.

There was also a low opinion of the availability of professional and support services within the region.

Even within Yorkshire the business community had a low opinion of the availability of land, labour and access to business support - yet the vast majority of Yorkshire business people believed their region had changed for the better during the past decade.

Keith Crane, senior media relations officer for Yorkshire Forward said there was no apology for the slogans: "We want to grab people's attention to tell them what we have here and this is typical Yorkshire plain speaking.