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CHENEY & CO.
Chase the Elm City Blues Away
Marketing is 'group pride.' Now, who wants to be part of the group?
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Business New Haven
9/6/1999
By: Carol Cheney
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Destination New Haven
I packed up five-year-old Emily, the Cairn terrier, a bunch of plants and Granny's silver tea set and headed northeast in my Plymouth Volare wagon. On our way from Houston to New Haven we jounced back and forth to my daughter's favorite eight-track tapes: "Baby, You Can Drive My Car" and anything by the Captain & Tenille.
The year was 1977 and we were relocating to the Elm City after eight years of Astros, major AC, the Galleria, bayous and cockroaches, the wonders of Cape Canaveral and, alas, a defunct marriage. I didn't have a job lined up; my friends thought I had lost my mind. "First you get the job and then you move to where it is." "No, first you move to where you want to live and then the job will take care of itself."
I had scientifically selected New Haven as the only place for us to take up residence. My empirical research began in 1945, when my family lived in a Milford beach house while my father attended Yale Law School. The next year my mother contracted a (then) life-threatening illness Grace New Haven Hospital pulled her through. (Water views, a major university, incredible medicine.)
Later, in college, I had frequented New Haven on weekends (lots to do, good food, close to the Merritt Parkway). And then, by 1977, I had concluded that New Haven was the shoreline gem of the East Coast, a superbly located small city with incomparable architecture and parks, culture and education within ten minutes of pick-your-own strawberries on the way to Boston or New York.
Amazing.
Such a happy camper I was, the Benedict Companies featured me in an ad that ran in the regional edition of Time in April 1978. I still am a happy camper.
It's hard to say exactly when and why the Elm City started singing the "You Don't Know the Half of It Dearie Blues." As a university town, New Haven actually fared pretty well during the tumultuous protest days of the late '60s. Perhaps it was somewhat more recently when the urban woes that followed the decline of manufacturing all over the Northeast were put under a microscope by journalists who were able to conveniently use high-profile New Haven as a case study - just an easy train ride from the Big Apple.
The end result is we're carrying around some old baggage, and it's time to put it down.
What Is Marketing, Anyway?
If you accept New Haven market-research guru Jeff Wack's definition of marketing, you will understand that it's a whole lot more than selling. True marketing is the systematic and intentional management of mutually beneficial relationships in which something of value is exchanged.
As a discipline, marketing involves an ongoing cycle of research, planning, implementation and assessment. As a mindset, marketing is "group pride," a full awareness and shared consensus about New Haven's attributes and selling points from the grass roots to those key community influencers in leadership positions.
Asset-recognition begets local self-esteem, which begets asset growth, which begets a broader positive public perception, and pretty soon a new energized image emerges on the horizon. It's not magic. It takes a lot of hard work.
The attitude is changing here; you can feel it. The 1995 Special Olympics World Games, four successively well attended International Festivals of Arts & Ideas, the All-America City designation, the refurbishment of Yale's stately buildings, and John DeStefano's city beautification and clean-up all are examples of events and activities that have helped shove New Haven out of its defensive, whining posture to a sunnier state of being and doing.
Another power-boost came last fall when the New Haven Regional Leadership Council issued an RFI for "the Design of a Marketing Campaign for New Haven, Connecticut." While some may be miffed that Baltimore-based TBC won the contract, their work and other marketing projects, such as the Regional Cultural Plan and initiatives at the state level, will provide important information about what messages and communications vehicles are most effective for influencing specific audiences.
CPR for the City
Our main problem isn't what is the Good News. Indeed, it is who's going to take financial and management responsibility for delivering the Good News.
Is it city government, the CVB, the chamber, the COG? TBC noticed in February that there does not currently exist an umbrella organization (or a budget) to implement a marketing plan. Lots of cities have such entities, often connected with community-development corporations, who serve as the gatekeepers of city image, an on-location communications agency.
What TBC commented on a few months back, many of us in the public-relations community recognized as a stumbling block several years ago. It's why I established the Council on Public Relations for Greater New Haven as an outcome of the Vision for a Greater New Haven process. A modest venture, to be sure, but one that has helped draw on the talents of the area's PR practitioners to fill a communications void.
Besides networking and drawing out interesting stories from individual institutions and businesses, a tangible outcome was the production of a greater New Haven media kit, comprising 13 fact sheets, that was used in media warm-ups before the Special Olympics and updated in 1997 before the International Festival. The kit, still viable, needs updating once again.
There's a limit to what volunteers should and can be called upon to do in building a better image for New Haven. Effective marketing must be a sustained, full-time enterprise able to operate beyond the influence of any one interest group. The money required to implement TBC's plan will be considerable and must be viewed as an investment in our future rather than as an expense.
Who's going to pony up? That is the burning question.
Involving Private Enterprise
In my zeal to let the world know how great New Haven is, I wanted to see if private enterprise could play a cost-sharing role in image building. So Cheney & Co. self-published the Guide to New Haven in 1996. At the time, there was a dearth of widely distributed free information of value to visitors and area residents.
My business plan was to sell the guide at such a low cost per unit (22 cents) that buyers would be able to use it as a freebie with employees, customers, friends and the public. We have sold about 70,000 copies, and while we have not recouped our cost, we got to know New Haven even better and are proud that our guide was selected to highlight New Haven's attractions and happenings as the major "Today" section of the city's official Web site.
We contemplate a second print edition, despite the fact that new brochures are now available through the Town Green Special Services District, the Convention & Visitors Bureau, and others. The more information, the merrier.
Free Advice
This brings me to three bits of free advice, at last. The first is to find creative ways for businesses and institutions to do their part in boosting New Haven's image. As was reported in the August 15 New York Times Magazine, automatic teller machines (ATMs) are multiplying like rabbits, and they're all set for multi-tasking, recognizing users by face (!) and delivering streams of targeted advertising to bank customers while they wait for their transactions to be completed.
Perhaps the local banking community will offer to display ads on their machines to herald upcoming New Haven events and other good news, such as availability of parking.
The Jury Is In
Approximately 100 people a day come into New Haven for jury duty 250 days a year. These 25,000 randomly selected "involuntary visitors" live in towns in the New Haven Judicial District, which encompasses New Haven, East Haven, Hamden, North Haven, Woodbridge, Bethany, Cheshire, Wallingford, Meriden, North Branford, Branford, Guilford and Madison.
For those who drive, parking is prearranged, but that's the only amenity that can be expected, along with hours of boredom cooped up in the courthouse waiting rooms. According to my preliminary investigations, there is no apparent prohibition on placing and possibly staffing a welcome center in the courthouse.
Here is the perfect opportunity to provide a hospitable welcome, disseminate information, stimulate patronage of local restaurants and conduct market research at a relatively modest cost.
Back to the Future
New Haven is a mecca of intellectual capital thanks to the presence of Yale and our other fine institutions of higher learning. A lot of people have lived in the New Haven area during college. Yale's undergraduate and graduate alumni total close to 135,000. Add SCSU's 72,000 (not corrected for overlaps between undergrad and grad students), UNH's 33,000, Quinnipiac's 25,000, Gateway's 9,000-plus and Albertus' 6,500, and we're looking at a vested audience of close to 300,000.
Cities and colleges go through life holding hands. Re-engaging alumni in New Haven is good for the city, which will benefit from good will, spending and we hope home-buying. It can also be good for the schools, who rely on full enrollments and voluntary gift support to balance the budget and make capital improvements.
How can we tap this potential ambassadorial force? Through the alumni magazines, Web sites, regional clubs - another cooperative effort between our city's educational institutions and the professional communicators who will manifest the vision of the New Haven Regional Leadership Council.
Accelerants
In addition to the formal marketing efforts underway now, I leave you with my pick of muscle-builders that will help focus the spotlight on New Haven in the months and years to come: the high-speed rail service, the Amistad, Yale's 300th birthday in 2002, the Enterprise Center and New Haven's Empowerment Zone (EZ) designation.
Just remember: When you cross the Triborough Bridge to head north from New York, the highway signs say "New Haven."
Not "New England" or "Stamford."
New Haven.
It's the place to be.
Tell your friends.
Carol L. Cheney is president and creative director of Cheney & Co., a full-service communications agency in New Haven.
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