Land here, live here

By Aaron Corvin
Columbian Staff writer

Regional business and civic leaders on Wednesday unveiled a campaign to lure companies — and more jobs — to the Portland-Vancouver area by effectively branding and marketing its strengths.

The campaign, spearheaded by Identity Clark County, an advocacy group of regional business leaders, is based on a theme that describes the region as Portland-Vancouver USA. It features a stylized image of Mount Hood and the Columbia River with the words “Land Here, Live Here.”

The idea is to spread that theme in campaign materials, including everything from putting the logo on the back of a business card to draping a huge banner with the logo on it on the old Post Hospital at Vancouver Barracks — which organizers did Wednesday morning.

Ron Arp, president of Brush Prairie-based Amplify Group, is donating his time to lead the grass-roots campaign. “We’re not going to be picky. What we want is to get our people back to work,” he told more than 100 attendees at Wednesday’s kickoff, held at the Hilton Vancouver Washington.

Planning got under way 10 months ago. It involved more than 200 businesspeople. Five area design firms provided graphic design options for the campaign. Vancouver-based Tribe2 Studios created the winning logo design and campaign concept.

Arp said the point of adopting a regional brand was to prevent the area from being overlooked by companies eyeing Vancouver, B.C., Seattle or Los Angeles, to start heightening awareness of the Portland-Vancouver area, and to “create curiosity.”

Ginger Metcalf, executive director for Identity Clark County, said the campaign is grounded in the best of what the region has to offer prospective employers: low energy costs; a high quality of life; business clusters, including the technology, manufacturing, clean energy and apparel sectors; and access to rail, roads and other important infrastructure.

“We have land here,” Metcalf added, “which is what site selectors want.”

The campaign theme — “Land Here, Live Here.” — and related materials are available in the form of “kits” to businesses, local governments, industry groups and nonprofits for a licensing fee of $199, Arp said. The proceeds will go into a special account set up at Identity Clark County, and will be invested in further advancing the campaign. Backers say they will track queries in response to the campaign to gauge its effectiveness.

The campaign kits are designed so they may be tailored to individual businesses or communities, Arp said. If, for example, the city of Ridgefield wants a logo that says, “Land in Ridgefield, Live in Ridgefield,” it can do that.

“This can be done for any community,” Arp added.

To her knowledge, Metcalf said, the “Land Here, Live Here.” campaign is the first of its kind for the region. Arp said the regional focus is based on the fact that experts who choose new sites for businesses think in terms of metropolitan areas rather than individual cities.

Backers of the campaign emphasized its grass-roots nature, noting that it involved plenty of volunteer work and little in the way of cash. Members of Identity Clark County contributed roughly $10,000 to $12,000 to help launch the campaign, Arp said, including covering printing costs.

Susan Bladholm, senior marketing manager for the Port of Portland, said the new campaign is an important vehicle for both Portland and Vancouver “to work together to get the word out.”

Tom Nelson, economic development manager for the city of Sherwood, Ore., also serves as chairman of the executive committee of the Portland-Vancouver Regional Partners Council for Economic Development. He said he believes the Portland and Vancouver areas have interconnected economies that will benefit from the branding campaign. If a business decides to set up in Vancouver, Nelson said, then it “helps the region and Sherwood.”

The campaign includes a website, http://www.portland-vancouverUSA.com, and testimonial advertisements. And while the campaign is intended to bring employers to the region by providing the numbers and facts that business executives want, Arp said, it also makes an emotional appeal by showcasing the region’s people, environmental amenities and sense of adventure. To that end, campaign signs and posters feature local businesspeople, including John Rudi, president of Vancouver-based Thompson Metal Fab, standing in front of iconic backdrops. And they show scenes of people boating and fishing in spectacular settings. “We’re not an uptight group,” Arp said.

Aaron Corvin: 360-735-4518, aaron.corvin@columbian.com.