As a self-described urbanologist, Max Grinnell spends a lot of time thinking about — and visiting — American cities.
And as someone who divides his time between Chicago and Boston when he’s not on the road, he’s no stranger to the Midwest.
But, Grinnell admits, he knows very little about Evansville.
He’s heard of the Four Freedoms Monument — read about it in a historical book — but has never been to Evansville and doesn’t have a sense of the city.
“I close my eyes and think of Evansville and I can’t think of anything,” Grinnell said during a recent telephone interview.
He’s not alone.
Evansville is a low-profile kind of place. It’s the economic and population hub of the Tri-State, but it’s not well-known outside the region. And even among locals, Evansville doesn’t necessarily have a clear sense of identity. Is the Ohio River location that makes this town special? Is it the institutions — universities, hospitals and major employers? Is it the people? Or IS there anything special here? Does there need to be?
Southwest Indiana Chamber of Commerce President and Chief Executive Officer Christy Gillenwater said she senses more community self-confidence than when she moved here to take the chamber job in January 2013. But the area still isn’t where she’d like it to be.
“We seem to still lack swagger.”
It’s not for lack of effort.
In recent years, the chamber and the Growth Alliance for Greater Evansville have both worked on identity and branding campaigns. GAGE’s efforts resulted in a research report but haven’t gone further than that. The chamber’s project is still in process, and Gillenwater has high hopes for its success.
You might be skeptical about the value of such projects: Concepts like “image” and “identity” can seem pretty fluffy. Wouldn’t Evansville be better served by tackling concrete issues like creating jobs and retaining young workers?
The truth is this: Both of these things are deeply intertwined. A sense of identity can help attract residents and jobs.
Economic development and labor attraction are connected in a chicken/egg relationship, says Tracy Bosman, the Chicago-based managing director of site selection firm BLS & Co.
Bosman was the keynote speaker at a leadership conference that took place at Deaconess Gateway Hospital in April. The event organizer was the Economic Development Coalition of Southwest Indiana.
“Do people move for the jobs, or do jobs follow people?” she asked the group.
Traditionally, Bosman said, economic developers have focused on job creation as the way to grow population and improve quality of life.
The new approach, Bosman said, is just the opposite.
In previous generations, professionals generally looked for a job, then moved to the area where they found a job. In contrast, she said, Millennials are more apt to choose a place to live, then find work in that area.
“We’re not attracting Millennials with jobs. We’re attracting them with quality of life,” she said during her talk.
Hot cities for Millennials now, she said, include Nashville, Tennessee; Portland, Oregon; San Francisco and Chicago.
Smaller cities can also develop their own “mojo,” Bosman said, but their challenge is to get the word out about what they have to offer.
One of Evansville’s weaknesses, Bosman said, is that it’s not well-known among outsiders. (Before beginning her talk, Bosman said this was her first visit to the area.)
This, then, is why GAGE and USI have put effort into regional identity efforts.
A little background on what they’ve done:
In 2011, GAGE and the University of Southern Indiana embarked on a research project that was intended to be the basis for a community marketing and branding campaign.
From that research, which included interviews and surveys with local residents and college students, came a February 2012 report.
From this report, “friendly and successful” emerged as the identity that both fit Evansville and was general enough to serve multiple purposes, said GAGE Executive Director Debbie Dewey.
From that point the project got put on hold — but for lack of interest, she said.
“We all kind of know that we need this identity converted to branding,” Dewey said.
GAGE decided to pause the branding campaign because of developments with I-69 and then the Downtown medical school. The concern was, she said, that a branding campaign might become outdated given these and other projects.
“Before we jump and say, ‘Here’s the stake in the sand,’ we need to make sure we have something long-lasting,” Dewey said.
In a separate effort, for the past year the chamber has worked on its own identity project.
Representatives from local businesses, media organizations and others came up with a possible slogan, “Ahead of the Bend.”
As with the GAGE effort, this project hasn’t resulted in an actual campaign rollout.
The effort to find and promote Evansville’s identity got a boost — and some new ideas — from an intercity visit to Grand Rapids, Michigan last month. The chamber organized the trip, which toured some of Grand Rapids’ major institutions and included visits with local leaders.
Gillenwater and Dewey said Grand Rapids gave them new ideas about community identity and branding.
One thing they, and others on the trip, noted was a striking similarity in how the Grand Rapids residents described their community.
Descriptors such as “friendly,” “vibrant,” “green” and “philanthropic” came up repeatedly, Dewey said.
“Every one of them used the same words.”
Gillenwater noticed something similar: The Grand Rapids representatives all mentioned the same handful of assets — a community arts event, a vibrant downtown, good schools, the number of local structures that had been certified as meeting national environmental standards.
Hearing about these things over and over again, Gillenwater said, gave her a strong message about what Grand Rapids is all about.
And, she said, it’s a strategy that can work for Evansville.
“If you have 100 different things you do, it’s hard to tell that story. But if you’re able to condense it down to 10 things you do well, that resonates and people can remember that,” Gillenwater said.
So rather than focusing on a slogan or tag line, the focus now is on identifying a list of 10 to 15 of Evansville’s best assets.
Once that list is developed, Gillenwater said, a specific message will be crafted for each of these assets, and the information will be disseminated throughout the community. The idea is to create a consistent message about Evansville, whether a hotel clerk is talking to a visitor or a business leader is talking with a client.
“We need to get on a common page for our vision and brand.”
Bowling Green State University’s Russell Mills, an assistant professor of political science, echoes some of these sentiments.
Mills, whose areas of expertise include economic development and the importance of place, said a sense of identity must originate from the community itself.
“It has to start internally.”
Mills is a Pittsburgh native, and he offers that city as an example.
Pittsburgh has undergone a huge transformation over the decades. No longer a gritty steel-mill town, it’s reinvented itself with a focus on its universities, medical resources and downtown development.
And the transformation has been helped along, Mills said, by current and former residents who love their hometown and tout its advantages. Mills said all that positive talk, both face-to-face and on social media, helps spread a message: Pittsburgh is a great place.
He counts himself as one of these boosters.
“I’ve lived a bunch of different places, but to me Pittsburgh’s the best.”
The key to developing a positive sense of place, Mills said, is to find something that’s unique and “market the heck out of it.”
“It’s whatever that one thing is that really defines your community.”
A lot of Pittsburgh’s local pride comes from its pro sports teams, Mills said, but in other towns it might come from a local landmark, a natural feature, even a popular sandwich.
“It truly can be anything.”
Evansville has grappled with identity for years.
In 1911, a group called the Evansville Business Association started what it called the “Boost Club.” The association’s president at the time was Mayor Benjamin Bosse, who outlined the group’s plans in a letter printed in the Nov. 30, 1911 Evansville Journal.
The Boost Club, Bosse wrote, had sent out 10,000 membership solicitation letters. For a $1 fee, members would receive a watch fob and a club badge.
The membership fees would help pay for the production and distribution of a booklet touting Evansville’s assets.
“Evansville has never before been advertised in the manner it should be and the business association through the new club expects to make up for any laxity in the matter in the past and see that Evansville is known from coast to coast and from Canada to Mexico,” Bosse wrote.
The identity issue also came to the fore in the 1950s, when the area was gripped by an economic crisis.
Between 1950 and 1957, Evansville lost a net of 10,000 jobs, with at least 10 companies closing their local operations.
In response, business leaders commissioned the Fantus Factory Locating Service to do a study of the area and what it needed to do to get on track.
The survey was released in early September 1958.
As part of its research for the report, Fantus surveyed presidents of large U.S. companies to ask them about Evansville. The researchers said they found a low awareness of Evansville among these respondents.
“It appears as if Evansville has failed to create for itself any image in the minds of corporate presidents,” the report said.
One of the more damning (and often-quoted) findings in the report also concerned Evansville’s identity issues.
Fantus described Evansville as “a city with a great inferiority complex” where people resented authority and could not work together.
“Evansville is racked by pessimism, gloom, inability to work in unified fashion; one group stymies another simply because of personality differences between members.”
But Fantus also cited numerous positives about the city, and ended its extensive report by offering a hopeful statement:
“Evansville has what it takes. Of that we are convinced. All it needs to do is learn to use its abilities more effectively and constructively.”