As public relations' projects go, it is the mother of marketing assignments - liberating Essex from 20 years of jokes about its wide-boy gangsters, retired Londoners from the East End and its infamous dumb blondes, all called Sharon and Cheryl, whose IQ is in inverse proportion to their promiscuity.
Short of rebranding Saddam Hussein or repositioning Big Macs as a diet supplement, there is no harder task in Britain, so inbuilt are Essex jokes in the national psyche. Forget the spin doctor, call a spin surgeon.
Actually, there was no shortage of applicants to turn Essex from a cultural wasteland into a respected shire. It is amazing what a GBP41,000 ($600,000) a year job offer and a GBP1.5 million campaign can do. The 'winner' starts next month.
Essex, once a Roman heartland, and the rural idyll immortalised by Constable, has fallen prey to the rapier-like wit of British snobbery, ridiculed as a tasteless, gaudy bolt hole for London's East End nouveau riche elite - footballers and footballers' wives, boxers, car dealers or coke dealers. It is what New Jersey is to the Big Apple.
Although it is London's second-wealthiest home county, Essex is seen as impoverished in culture, a region where more is more, be it crazy paving on the 17th century manor house drive, or wearing Versace to the pub. Its famous sons are footballers such as Bobby Moore and David Beckham, not prime ministers or poets. It is easy to forget that actresses Dame Maggie Smith, Sarah Miles and Charlotte Rampling are Essex girls.
As with all stereotypes, there is some truth in the Essex girl and nouveau riche tags. The latter is but an accident of geography. Essex starts at the East End's outer reaches. Anyone who works hard enough to escape Bethnal Green or Mile End ends up in Essex.