It was a fair question. I responded back with a few things; first my family is here - I have roots, but then I asked him, "don't you know about our history?" He wasn't sure what I meant so I elaborated, 'our history in regards to high tech and innovation.' A history that stretches back over 100 years but still includes recent innovations such as the search engine, open source software, Global Hawk and so on. He admitted that he wasn't aware of that.
Now the most surprising part of all of this was that he hailed from Cincinnati. How is it that even within the State of Ohio, practically just down the street from us, people don't know about the Miami Valley? If we had conspired to keep our reputation, our story a classified secret we couldn't have done a more effective job. It's time that we de-classified this secret and begin to market ourselves based upon our Reputation rather than our Location.
Being "The 90 minute market" which strangely people thought was effective even while businesses fled the region in droves was quite frankly a poor idea from the start. What were we telling the world, that we were within a short drive to all sorts of other more interesting locations? The more recent "Get Midwest" campaign is a continuation of that pathetic theme and the time to say No Longer has arrived.
- We will No Longer let marketing or demographics dictate strategy.
- We will No Longer neglect the real story of the Miami Valley, keeping our heritage and our value proposition a well-guarded secret.
- We will No Longer entrust the future of the valley to those without vision...
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