ST. LOUIS • A group of regional businesses and civic organizations are funding a marketing campaign with a novel approach: They hope to persuade St. Louisans that St. Louis is cool.

STLMade launched on Thursday at the high-ceilinged, concrete-walled, microbrew-serving Venture Café, to a room packed with hundreds of artists, scientists, hipsters, executives and computer nerds.

The campaign’s first goal, said marketing maestro Lee Broughton, is to highlight all of the quirky, artsy, high-tech and innovative things happening here, in the hopes of showing St. Louis how hip it actually is.

“We are being noticed as a place on fire right now,” Broughton said. “It doesn’t matter where you look at it, whether it’s culture, whether it’s community or whether it’s business. Something is afoot in St. Louis. We believe it is renaissance, and it is our time to project that perception.”

But telling the story of St. Louis to St. Louisans is just a first step, he said. Soon, Broughton plans on going national. He hopes the combination of local focus and a national campaign will change the country’s view of the region, drive businesses to locate here, and ultimately jump-start stagnant population growth.