Westchester County has unveiled a new marketing campaign designed to rebrand the county as New York state”™s brain trust.
The three-year, $300,000 campaign is crystallized by a logo featuring a green, pixilated New York state that trumpets Westchester, in darker green, as “New York”™s intellectual capital,” a double entendre. The logo also announces a new Web site, thinkingWestchester.com, that invites the visitor to view the county as a dynamic place where a cultivated populace ”“ made of both newcomers and veterans ”“ is right at home. (The Web site also links to key business resources, including the Westchester County Industrial Development Agency, which is funding the campaign.)
In making the announcement at The Gateway Center in Valhalla ”“ Westchester Community College”™s new green, synergistic space for its business and foreign language programs ”“ county officials stressed the talent pool here.
“Westchester County”™s highly educated workforce is among its greatest and most important assets,” said Laurence P. Gottlieb, the county”™s Director of Economic Development. “And the exceptional quality of the workforce crosses all job categories from high-level scientists, engineers and mathematicians to the construction trades, retail sector and the arts. It”™s a key factor in attracting and keeping world-class companies in Westchester.”
Statistics would seem to back Gottlieb. He noted that 45 percent of the county”™s residents age 25 and up hold at least a bachelor”™s degree, compared with the state average of 32 percent and the national average of 27 percent.
The campaign”™s initial series of print and online ads, appearing in area business publications, plays off these stats. The ads marry workaday items ”“ a picket fence, a coffee cup, a hand ”“ and complex mathematical, chemical and engineering formulas. It”™s a nod to the growth sectors the county has already targeted ”“ biotech, finance, health care, information technology and the environment.
But can the county really claim to be the state”™s intellectual capital in the shadow of New York City, even as it exploits its proximity to the cosmopolis in the new marketing strategy?
It”™s a claim the county is willing to stake in tough economic times.
In a follow-up phone interview, Gottlieb said that White Plains has the second busiest train station in the state after Grand Central Terminal, because of the reverse commute from the Big Apple:
“We”™ve always been the intellectual capital,” Gottlieb added, “the only difference is today we officially declared it as such.”
