The campaign was shown to an enthusiastic council meeting last month featuring a series of either/or propositions under the tagline "would you rather" - like would you rather be the sardine on a packed bus or a fisherman in an untouched New England national park? Another tagline was "where you'd rather be".

The council has committed to spend $75,000 advertising Glen Innes as a place to live, invest and visit, with the council to spend money on billboards, digital advertising, Google adwords and video.

Council manager of economic development Margot Davies has worked in advertising and marketing in the UK and Australia. She's been the sardine and chose to return to Glen Innes.

"What's I think distinctive about this is that we really leverage the insight around why people visit, live and then potentially invest (in Glen Innes)," she said.

"So, you know when you're thinking about people coming from south east Queensland the (ad) execution they see is the sardine execution (pictured above).

"They're coming from the big city into the country. So it's leveraging that insight and hitting that note."

The council has shifted its brand from "Celtic" to "Highland country" in order to target a broader audience. In December 2016 the council decided the Celtic theme was too "one dimensional" and resolved to change gears.

The campaign website is set to go online in a few weeks or a month, with digital and other forms of advertising to come online in coming months.

The campaign, so far, has been executed in outdoor media, advertorials, and press advertising, internal and external signage at the visitor information centre in Glen Innes and merchandising.

Go Cross media, which won the contract to develop the new "storyline" (called "progressive country") was briefed to aim at four sections of the community - locals who left for uni, or for work, tree changers and retirees or semi-retirees.

Ms Davies said the aim is to sell the town to families, who can build the population and drag more services like schools and doctors to New England.

"We want the visitor economy to contribute to the local economy but we also want to attract tree changes and regional returners to come back," she said.

"Raise their families, bring their skills, start a business, buy a business, leverage an opportunity.

"So the campaign is designed to stretch across those three groups."