| New
marketing campaign aims to raise region's profile
Related
story:
- Growth & Development
by
Lisa Dressler Garst
Virginia Business
October
2004
In
this part of Southwest Virginia, mostly small towns
and rural counties spread across the valleys and low
mountains that ring the more urbanized areas of Roanoke
and Blacksburg. Long known for its scenic vistas, railroad
heritage and now an Atlantic Coast Conference football
team at Virginia Tech, the region is in the midst of
a makeover. It goes by a new nickname these days —
NewVa — accompanied by a soothing logo of a mountain
sunrise. The new packaging is part of a branding campaign
unveiled earlier this year that describes NewVa as a
place that offers “the opportunity for an active,
engaged, yet comfortable and secure lifestyle.”
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Certainly
locals would know best if that’s true, but they’re
not the target audience for this new marketing pitch.
Boosters of this region of nearly 500,000 say the new
logo and campaign are part of an effort to raise the
region’s visibility.
And for good reason. A study done two years ago uncovered
some troubling trends: the region’s economy in
recent years has lagged behind the state and the nation
in several critical areas, including job creation, personal
income and population growth. “We have an old
transportation/manufacturing center that is trying to
figure out what it wants to be in the New Economy,”
says Wayne Strickland, executive director of the Roanoke
Valley — Alleghany Regional Commission.
Even some of the region’s larger and more developed
sectors may need help. A second study completed in August
by the commission and the Center for Regional Competitiveness
at George Mason University found that the region’s
travel and tourism industry hasn’t kept up with
the national average for that sector. The report also
noted that while growth in health care and business
services was strong, those sectors didn’t outperform
national averages. Still, there has been solid growth
for some companies, including Delta Dental Plan of Virginia,
a nonprofit that in ten years has boosted its revenue
from $18 million to $195 million and its employees from
20 to 165.
Home to many schools, the cluster of jobs in higher
education is unsteady as well, according to the study.
The region has 19 two-year and four-year post-secondary
institutions, anchored by Virginia Tech and Radford
University, but employment there has been hurt by state
budget cuts. What’s more, the region’s computer
technology and IT sectors fared poorly compared to national
trends and lost jobs during the most recent recession.
“These firms will have a significant challenge
in staging a comeback,” the study noted.
But the report did uncover a number of sectors in which
the Roanoke and New River Valley region has an advantage.
Among them is mechatronics – an emerging field
that combines electronics, mechanics and engineering.
It’s a relatively small employment sector with
2,777 jobs locally, but that’s 12 times what would
be expected, according to the study.
The region’s advantage stems in part from the
presence of two major employers, says Victor Iannello,
president of Synchrony Inc., a Roanoke County firm that
develops advanced automation and information systems.
General Electric in Salem employs more than 1,000 people
in electronics, drive systems and fiber optics, and
Kollmorgen, a leading international manufacturer of
high-performance motion control products and systems,
employs more than 700 people. Kollmorgen plans to expand
its operations in Radford with a $2.8 million customer
support center that will create another 70 jobs. “Some
of it is just a factor of these two large companies
that have formed a cluster,” says Iannello, who
is also chairman of the Fifth Planning District Regional
Alliance. “Once you have a critical mass, it takes
off.”
Among the other industries with good growth potential
are motor vehicle manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and
banking. Roanoke is home to Advance Auto Parts, a Fortune
500 and the second-largest specialty auto parts retailer
in the U.S. The banking sector grew 28 percent faster
in the region than the national average in recent years
despite mergers of major banks. Many of those jobs are
in back-office banking services.
One leading business in the finance sector is Atlantic
Credit and Finance, which was founded in 1996 by brothers
Richard and Kelly Woolwine, two Roanoke natives. For
the past two years the company has made Inc. magazine’s
list of fastest-growing, privately held companies in
the country. Its specialty is buying charged-off credit
card debt and recovering what it can from the debtors.
The firm employs about 300 people in Roanoke and another
100 people in offices in Richmond and Columbia, Md.
Richard Woolwine, the firm’s CEO, says the Roanoke
market offers a wealth of potential employees. He adds,
“We’ve been able to hire as many as we’d
like to. We are not having any trouble meeting our manpower
goals.”
That’s good news for a region that needs to attract
new skilled workers. Part of the new marketing pitch
will emphasis the quality-of-life attractions here,
and there are plenty. Beth Neu, economic development
director for Roanoke, is eager to make a case for the
region. Roanoke has a “quaint and cool”
downtown with free Wi-Fi, an emerging eTown district,
and nearby Virginia Tech is a key economic driver. “If
you look nationwide, it is those areas associated with
a quality in-state educational institute that are growing
the fastest,” she says.
For outdoor recreation there’s the George Washington
and Jefferson National Forests and the Appalachian Trail.
There’s also the New River and Smith Mountain
Lake. The city also has the new O. Winston Link Museum,
which opened in January. Located in the renovated historic
Norfolk & Western Railway passenger station, the
museum houses the world’s largest collection of
the acclaimed 20th century photographer’s work. The
Jefferson Center, a renovated high school, features
the Shaftman Performance Hall, which hosts performers
as diverse as The Four Tops, Bruce Hornsby and The Roanoke
Symphony Orchestra.
The Art Museum of Western Virginia plans a building
in downtown Roanoke to house the permanent collection,
special exhibits and an IMAX theater. The design is
under wraps, though, and so far only major donors have
been privy to the plan.
The NewVa regional marketing pitch could use some major
donors, too. The Fifth Planning District Regional Alliance
recently lost its state funding to budget cuts and now
has few resources to promote its new brand. Howard Packett,
a member of the Salem City Council and the founder of
a local advertising firm, says the lack of money will
cripple the marketing effort. “We need to make
an investment. It’s like selling any product,”
he says. “You need to focus on what you want to
sell and hit it over and over.”
It will take more than marketing to overcome the region’s
relative isolation from major markets, including Northern
Virginia, Hampton Roads and the North Carolina cities
of Raleigh and Charlotte. Efforts to get a low-fare
airline to serve Roanoke Regional Airport have so far
been unsuccessful. The proposed TransDominion Express,
a rail service that would run from Washington and Richmond
through the region to Bristol, is still years away.
And the state is working on plans for a major expansion
of the entire Interstate 81 corridor that includes tolls
on trucks.
Neu, however, remains optimistic. “People come
up to me all the time and say I moved here even though
I didn’t have a job. Or maybe they were here for
10 years with a company and decided to come back after
retirement to live here,” she says. “Soon
the jobs will follow the people.”
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