How to keep a best kept secret.
Posted on February 28, 2008
Recently, a local lifestyle magazine featured Dr. Ed Murphy on its cover with the question, “Can he save this valley?” It’s not the first time that Roanoke has pondered how its largest employer will protect our fate.
We should be grateful that the CEO is running his company efficiently and evolving its business model to survive the future of healthcare. Instead, we ask whether or not he can evolve our valley as well.
A few weeks after that article ran, the publisher of that magazine was featured on the front page of the business section of a local newspaper. Richard Wells was being lauded for investing $135,000 in a campaign to attract new residents to Roanoke by telling the world, or at least the East Coast, about “America’s Best-Kept Secret.” As he said in the article, he wasn’t aware of anyone ever telling people to come live here– and he’s been here a very long time. He described his effort as “lighting a candle in the darkness.”
It turns out that the ad was telling people to request a copy of a relocation guide published by Wells. The Chamber publishes its own, presumably official, relocation guide. The newspaper naturally sought to get a comment from Beth Doughty, who at the time was the President of the Roanoke Area Chamber of Commerce. At the time, she also knew that she would be leaving the Chamber to become Executive Director of the Roanoke Valley Economic Development Partnership.
She expressed her doubt about Wells’ effort saying, “I doubt that a magazine alone could get that job done, but in concert with a lot of the things going, that’s great.” The key there is having a lot of things going in concert. Yet, she didn’t express any concern that his effort was not in concert with the unified image campaign that the Economic Development Partnership has promised to deliver. Which brings us to our point– the best way to keep a secret is to tell everyone something different or nothing at all.
The reason that the greater Roanoke area is such a secret is that we cannot come up with a consistent brand message that differentiates us from other regions competing for the same new residents and employers. In fact, we have trouble even agreeing on a unified self-image.
Until this year, the municipalities that the Economic Development Partnership represents appointed the members of the board. Each of these municipalities has fiercely guarded its identity, which has kept regionalism from becoming a reality. It’s like having eight brothers and sisters who don’t want to use their last name for fear that they will forget their first.
But, this year, the Economic Development Partnership changed the way they do things. Instead of the municipalities choosing the board, the Roanoke Business Council now controls the Economic Development Partnership. This is the same group that commissioned the quality of life study completed by former Roanoke College president, Sabine O’Hara. Using that study as a blueprint, these business leaders plan to embark on a new plan for the valley’s future funded by a fresh $6.5 million ponied up by local investors and taxpayers. And, they’ve hired Beth Doughty to administer those funds to turn the valley around.
It will be interesting to see whether or not she can get everyone singing off the same sheet of music. And if she can accomplish that, it will be even more interesting to hear whether that singing has any sense of harmony. The first step in that process will be creating a common identity and message. The next step will be getting everyone who communicates with the outside world to use it. The only secret in America that is better kept than Roanoke is NewVa.
It’s curious that Richard Wells didn’t sign off his ads with the NewVa logo we invested so much money in creating. He couldn’t really use the City’s mountain and star logo. That would breed resentment among the other municipalities represented in his relocation guide. So, he was left to simply use a photo of the neon star and a headline.
If we had a real marketing plan in place, people like Mr. Wells who take the initiative to promote the area would have the tools they need to build our brand. His $135,000 investment would be supported by, and in synch with, the $6.5 million effort of the Partnership. Unfortunately, we’ve spent almost the entire first year of the effort looking for a new leader, only to hire the former director.
Maybe the next issue of Richard Wells’ magazine can feature a photo of Ms. Doughty with the line, “Can She Save This Valley?” Dr. Murphy has been advocating regionalism since he came here. He’s doing his share by partnering with Virginia Tech on a new medical school and putting the area on the map as an innovator in healthcare. But it’s not his job to save the valley. We’ve hired a person to do that now.
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