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The Surrey town of Camberley has taken the crown as the brainiest in Britain in the Great Town and City Christmas Quiz. Over 400 towns and cities took part in the festive quiz from the four nations of the UK.
After an early lead, Scottish town Elgin took second place in the quiz, after being pipped to the post by Camberley in the final hours of the competition. Edinburgh took third place, with Newport on the Isle of Wight in fourth and London fifth.
The festive quiz invited people to compete on behalf of their town or city by answering Christmas and gift themed questions, and was developed by Scottish fintech Miconex to encourage people to shop locally and show support for where they live.
Over 5000 entries were also received for the prize draw to win a £1500 Town and City Gift Card for the winner’s choice of town or city. Miconex introduced 19 of its local economy boosting gift card programmes during the latter part of 2020, taking its total number of programmes in the UK and Ireland to 56.
New data from Visa and the Centre for Economics and Business Research has shown that 81% of people are supporting local businesses more this year, and that shoppers can double the amount of money that stays in their local economy by shopping locally.
Fears around the purchases of single venue gift cards has also led to the rise in popularity of multi venue gift cards such as Town and City Gift Cards. Data from the Gift Card Voucher Association found that multi venue gift cards represented 37.7% of all gift cards purchased in October 2020.
Colin Munro, managing director for Miconex said: “One of the positives of 2020 is the support that has been shown for the places where we live. Shopping locally supports livelihoods, jobs and economies and that has really hit home for people this year.
“The Great Town and City Christmas Quiz is 2020 in a nutshell, people supporting where they live and I couldn’t be prouder of those that have taken the time to compete for their town or city, sharing the shop local message.
“Huge congratulations to Camberley for taking the title of brainiest Christmas town, and to the lucky winner of the £1500 Town and City Gift Card. I hope it brings a really positive end to their 2020.”
Jodie MacAndrew, BID Manager for Collectively Camberley commented:
“We are so excited to have won the crown of ‘brainiest place in Britain’! Since our launch of the Love Camberley Gift Card, back in September, we have worked very hard to market it and have run several of our own giveaways and competitions to support this. So when Miconex told us that they were running the quiz, which had such a large prize that could potentially be put back into our local businesses, we had our sights set on getting Camberley to the top of the table!
“We achieved the win through the incredible efforts of our local community, who recognise the importance of supporting their local businesses and town centre, especially now. Hats off to Elgin who kept us on our toes the whole time and who had the same enthusiasm and drive as us! Even down to the final hours, we had to work hard to stay ahead!
We would like to thank the people of Camberley for taking the time to enter of our behalf, for putting up with us constantly posting about it on our social media and flooding their inboxes with reminder emails! We have our fingers crossed that one of them will win the £1500 prize to spend locally with us.”
