YorksPast

I decided to do a Google search on ‘Middle of Everywhere’ after reading Jim McClure’s York Town Square post yesterday about why not ‘Middle of Everywhere’ brand for York County works; because we are. There were scores of hits on the phrase ‘Middle of Everywhere.’ I quickly found several communities that use that brand and stopped looking any further after finding the County of Grande Prairie in Alberta, Canada, even has the middleofeverywhere web site.

I then turned to some things that I learned many years ago from a good friend. When I was getting my Masters Degree in Engineering, Mary was taking a business course in Marketing; I was essentially taking it with her.

Mary’s condensed rules on branding served me well throughout my engineering career and even more recently. An effective brand slogan has to be: something unique, something pertinent and something that flows easily off the tongue. We’d always start by brainstorming ideas, after which the exercise was to write a host of very short sentences, conveying the pertinence of the slogan.

For example when I decided to start writing this Blog, I used those same rules. I brainstormed a list of about a dozen possible titles and did not really like any of them. I then started to write the very short sentences that conveyed what the Blog was about. One of the sentences was “Write about York’s past.” As soon as I had written it, I had no doubt in my mind; YorksPast was the title of this Blog. And was relieved to see it was unique, when I did a Google search.

I did the same thing, in coming up with an alternative to the phrase ‘Middle of Everywhere.’ The brainstorming was again not very effective. Mary always explained, the brainstorming exercise was primarily designed to get ones creative juices flowing; because many of the best brand slogans end up coming from the short sentences exercise. The one sentence that stood out was “York County is the crossroads of the Susquehanna Valley.” It is actually pretty obvious in looking at a map. I did a Google search and “Crossroads of the Susquehanna Valley” was not used by anyone else, therefore it passes the uniqueness test.

Comment to Jim McClure’s post or this post if you have ideas for a York County brand.

Related posts are:

• Welcome to the Heart of the Lower Susquehanna
• Susquehanna Trail through York County; Wrap-Up
• York was in danger of losing the Lincoln Highway during 1914