Former Fentimans Marketing Director, Jayne Andrews, has worked in the North East for three years (and loves it), but one thing still bugs her at local events: we end up talking about ‘the North’ instead of our actual work. It's time we stopped.

In my career, I've worked in London, Sydney, Miami and now Hexham near Newcastle. Moving north didn't give me some kind of talent bypass. I'm still creating work as good as anything I've produced elsewhere. The agencies I've worked with here. Absolutely no difference between the brilliant ones and the mediocre ones compared to anywhere else in the world.

Yet somehow, when you attend an event up here, 50% of the agenda involves panels with Q&As dominated by topics like 'supercharging the north' or 'inviting the North to the table'. When really, we just want to see the same content we'd get in London. Nobody goes to a London event to sit through 'Why London is Brilliant'. They go for great case studies, emerging trends, provocations, and interesting people.

That's what we should see in Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds and Edinburgh. Show us the work. Quality content. Not another talkfest about working in the North. By all means, show us work from local businesses, but we're not opposed to seeing stuff from London either. People attend events to learn and network, not to be reassured that where they live is really good. We already know that. That's why we bloody well live here.

Let's be more vocal about the great work the North is creating!

To be fair, MAD//North got this right last year. Drummond Central presenting their work with Gregg's was genuinely useful and would have been just as valuable to a London audience. Celebrating the North, in the right way. And I was invited to talk about brand growth at Fentimans. Giving successful Northern brands the stage to talk about their work is far more powerful than a bunch of industry professionals defending how talented they are.

Not forgetting, we need more access to seeing great work and speakers without having to pay the exorbitant train fare to the big smoke!

I stood outside a recent Manchester event with a young marketing exec who was deciding whether to stay for the afternoon sessions. I'd already made my mind up. She was bored of the defensive agenda too. 'Why can't they just show us more work?' she said. 'This is boring now.'

Exactly. The best defence of Northern creativity isn't another panel about Northern creativity. It's just doing brilliant work and putting it on stage without the qualifier.

Jayne will be writing a column for MAD//Insight throughout the year.