Letting the Grass Grow: Small Town Branding in the Finger Lakes

LETTING THE GRASS GROW: SMALL TOWN BRANDING IN THE FINGER LAKES

APRIL 2008 BY ERIKA L. ECKSTROM

[email protected]

LETTING THE GRASS GROW: SMALL TOWN BRANDING IN THE FINGER LAKES

APRIL 2008

ERIKA L. ECKSTROM AMERICAN UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION PUBLIC COMMUNICATIONS

SECTIONS: INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................................1

BACKGROUND .......................................................................................................................2

BRANDING ..........................................................................................................................10

LOCATION BRANDING .........................................................................................................14

TOURISM BRANDING ..........................................................................................................17

GEOGRAPHIC BRAND ..........................................................................................................24

EXPERIENCE TOURISM ........................................................................................................28

CULTURE MARKETING ........................................................................................................32

ITHACA’S ARTS ..................................................................................................................36

GREEN LIVING ....................................................................................................................44

FOOD IDENTITY ..................................................................................................................54

WINE ..................................................................................................................................64

COLLEGES AND EDUCATION ..............................................................................................67

AN INTERNATIONAL PRESENCE ..........................................................................................73

INNOVATION .......................................................................................................................76

FESTIVITIES AND A SENSE OF SELF ...................................................................................82

A WORD OF MOUTH CONCLUSION ....................................................................................86

REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................... i

INTRODUCTION

As the world becomes smaller and smaller with the rise of globalization, improved

technological communication and increased travel, small provincial cities are now being placed

on the same playing field as their colossus counterparts in developing a reputation. The necessity

to establish a position on this global marketplace, no matter how small the share may be, is urgent

in securing an economic, social and cultural future.

To guarantee the successful continuation of cities and regions, it is imperative that they

establish a defining brand that unites the community and differentiates them from their

competition, both large and small. Even minute towns and rural destinations need these brands to

establish their presence and ensure that they are not relegated to a stagnant or declining status of a

ghost town, or worse, a failure.

Yet, the ability of smaller venues to develop large scale public relations and advertising

campaigns is limited. Without the budget or coordinated infrastructure of large cities, small

places are often unable to compete on such a large market. However, because of their

incorporation into regions, these petite locales are able to piggyback off of the regional branding

endeavors to give them a boost in the global marketing sphere. But even more important, they are

able to galvanize their smaller populations, uniting them in common identity and allowing their

brand to develop and evolve out of their own community, an effort that is not necessarily

consciously created nor managed.

As a result, the brands that come to signify the unique differentiation between small

places and their small and large competition exist first to unite the local community and galvanize

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a guerilla marketing schemata. They then work to attract outsiders and develop the place as a

destination.

BACKGROUND

As native of Ithaca, N.Y., I have always been impressed by my hometown. As I travel the

world, from international regions as remote Australia, Israel and Lithuania to domestic locales

such as San Francisco, New York City and Washington, D.C., I am always astounded to find that

people are familiar with Ithaca. And not only do they know where I am from, but they know the

words to Cornell’s Alma Mater, “High Above Cayuga’s Water,” they know of the local

vegetarian and vegan restaurant, Moosewood, and they know our catchphrase, “Ithaca is Gorges.”

As a result, I have begun to believe that though Ithaca may in fact have ‘gorges’, it is more than

that: Ithaca thinks globally and acts ‘gorgesly’, it’s own flavor of distinctiveness and reputation.

The Finger Lakes region of upstate New York consists of 14 counties that compose the

central band of the State between Pennsylvania and Lake Ontario. Tompkins County is located in

the southwestern zone of the Finger Lakes region on the southern tip of Cayuga Lake. The center

point for the county is the city of Ithaca, known for its two colleges, Cornell University and

Ithaca College, as well as its ecoconscious, artistic and intellectually minded consumer

community.

As of 2006, the county’s population consisted of 100,407 residents (U.S. Census Bureau,

2008b). The City of Ithaca’s population, consisting of 30,343 residents (U.S. Census Bureau,

2008a), makes up nearly one third of people living in the county. However, this measure of

Ithaca’s residents only represents half of the population actually living in the city. Cornell brings

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in an additional 20,638 undergraduate, graduate and medical students to the area (Cornell

University, 2008d), and Ithaca College an additional 6,660 undergraduate and graduate students

(Ithaca College, 2007a). The local Tompkins Cortland Community College also enrolls 3,000

students annually (Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, 2008). As a result nearly half of the

city’s population consists of temporary members.

As the only provincial city in the area, Ithaca is the hub around which the Finger Lakes

turns. Ithaca is practically in the center of a large loop of interstate highways: I81 to the east

going from Syracuse to Binghamton; I86 going from Binghamton through Corning to Bath;

I390 continuing from I86 to Rochester; and I90 finishing the loop from Rochester to Syracuse.

This location places Ithaca one hour from Syracuse, two from Rochester and four to both

Philadelphia, Pa., and New York City. Within this loop, Ithaca is the only city that has a resident

population of over 30,000 (and note that this does not even include the students). Of the other

sizable towns, Auburn comes close with 27,766 residents but houses no transient student

population. The other cities do not even come close, Geneva boasting only 13,367, Seneca Falls

with 9,291, Waterloo with 7,811 and Skaneateles a whopping 7,380 (U.S. Census Bureau,

2008c). With industry, universities, travel infrastructure, and retail outlets, Ithaca supports a

number of smaller peripheral communities. People work in Ithaca, shop in Ithaca, go to the

movies in Ithaca, eat out in Ithaca, stay in Ithaca while visiting and use Ithaca as a launching pad

to discover the surrounding area, products, services, and venues. Not only do they come to Ithaca

but they consider themselves Ithacans (McPhetters, 2008).

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This influx of surrounding residents that come on a regular basis for daily trips to Ithaca

is three fold: work, commerce and tourism . According to Jean McPheeters, the president of the

Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, “We are importing into our county on a daily basis

somewhere about 14,000 people to go to work in the county because we don’t have enough

people for all the jobs we have,” (McPheeters, 2008). Secondly are the consumerist needs that

Ithaca quells with its small local stores as well as its bigbox retail outlets.

Stephen Kimball, the director of marketing and development for Tompkins County Area

Development, is one of these out of county workers, living in Burdett in Schuyler County and

commuting to Ithaca via bus or car for his job. He notes that not only does he come for work, but

simply to buy the products he needs for his household: “It’s hard to find good cheese in Schuyler

County [and the other contiguous counties] so we come into town and shop. We can’t get chicken

feed in Schuyler County, so we come to Agway [in Ithaca],” (Kimball, 2008). He illustrates that

even the farmers in the surrounding area need to make the trips to the petite metropolis to simply

to do their business, buy their farming goods, and repair their equipment.

Because of the multiplicity of places to stay, proliferation of restaurants and diverse

entertainment, Ithaca has an impressively large carrying capacity for a small provincial city that is

well beyond that of the surrounding area. The 21 hotels, five inns, 54 bed and breakfasts, three

state parks, 16 privately owned rental residences and four camping grounds located in the Ithaca

vicinity offer a total of 1,826 rooms and suites, 56 cabins and cottages, and 597 designated

campsites. In total this provides Ithaca with a temporary housing capacity well over 7,000 people

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(Ithaca/Tompkins County Convention and Visitor Bureau, 2008a). Then there are the 162 dining

facilities that provide unlimited options ranging from vegan delicacies to exotic feasts.

Much of this tourist infrastructure is developed to support the colleges during their

graduation and reunion weekends, but yet it provides an excellent hub from which people can

depart to visit wineries, family, parks, small neighboring villages, and everything else that

surrounds the city. And upon return to Ithaca, visitors have the luxury of participating in the

quaint offerings Ithaca possesses: the downtown area better known as “The Commons,” the local

playhouses, the independent movie theaters, and the parks and waterfalls.

Because of this, the colleges have developed a large presence in the community and as a

result many of the local residents are affiliated with or employed by one of the colleges.

Combined, Ithaca College and Cornell employ 11,005 residents (Tompkins County Chamber of

Commerce, 2008).

The colleges, especially Cornell University, actively recruit international students, faculty

and employees, bringing a range of different people to the local population. As a result of this

influx, there is a significant international, particularly Asian, population living in Tompkins

County and the Ithaca area. This diversity has been well accepted by the community and the

fusion of different people – ranging from local rural farmers to academics, foreigners, urban

dwellers, elderly people, conservatives, and liberals – has become a source of pride and identity

for the area.

Diversity and options have always been a strongpoint for Ithaca. Despite the presence of

diversity, Ithaca remains predominantly white, AngloSaxon makeup. Yet, Ithaca has always

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been highly progressive in embracing both cultural and ethnic diversity. The birthplace of the first

intercollegiate Greekletter fraternity established for Black college students in 1906 (Cornell

University, 2003) and in the same region as Seneca Falls, home to the first Women’s Rights

Convention in 1848 (National Park Service, 2008), the area has a longstanding history in

implementing and accepting diversity and human rights and giving people lifestyle alternatives.

While there is a large influence that the colleges bring to the community and local

economy and population, it is not necessarily the main feature that defines the county’s way of

life. Ithaca and the surrounding county have a large economic base in agriculture, viticulture and

ecotourism. The landscape, consisting of breathtaking views, rich forests, and deep waterfalls

carved by the glaciers ages ago, are also home to four state parks with deep, dramatic gorges,

swimming areas and camping, hiking, and picnicking facilities.

The lush rolling hills are home to smallscale local farms and wineries that are well

incorporated into the local economy. Many of these local agricultural institutions have been

heavily influenced by the rise in the popularity of the area’s cooperative markets and organic

farming techniques, as well as the scientific innovations of Cornell’s landgrant college. As a

result, many of the agricultural and artistic products produced in Tompkins County are

profoundly sustainable and “green.”

Ithaca has always been on the cutting edge of creativity and innovation. The local area

was one of the first communities to have telephones, electric lights and street cars, partly because

of Cornell University presence in the community, but also because local residents have always

been seen as visionaries.

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In 1977, the Ithaca Festival was created to highlight these aspects and symbolize Ithaca

and the region’s people, values, and culture. The emphasis on local music and arts is amplified

only by the fact that everything is literally created in Ithaca’s “backyard.” The lively celebration

enables the community to express itself and illustrate this progressive upstate New York

community at the base of Cayuga Lake just as it is: composed of artists, farmers, students,

dreamers, absent–minded professors, writers, activists, musicians, teachers, Tibetan monks, belly

dancers, happy families and hundreds and hundreds of rusted, but still serviceable Volvos.

During the same time period that the Ithaca Festival was blossoming into a sustainable,

local entity, the town also was hit by a grassroots branding endeavor that snowballed into a

creature of its own magnitude and power: ‘Ithaca is Gorges.’

In the late 1970s, Howard Cogan’s local, Ithaca based advertising company was invited

to develop a theme for Ithaca’s community to use to promote itself. ‘Ithaca is Gorges’ was born

out of Cogan’s brainstorming conversation and has since developed into a slogan that Ithacans

and Ithaca fans around the globe have united behind in full force. ‘Ithaca is Gorges’ defines the

‘10 square miles’ said to be ‘surrounded by reality’ that makes up Ithaca, N.Y. The slogan

reflects the natural beauty of Ithaca and the wonder of its 150 trademark waterfalls and gorges,

and now, after more than 25 years, the catchphrase has become part of the local culture.

But it all started with just a handful of greenandwhite shirts. Cogan, who taught

advertising and public relations at Ithaca College, decided to print up some ‘Ithaca is Gorges’

shirts for his associates and some friends. The cutesy inside joke appealed to a larger crowd and

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now everyone in Ithaca seems to own a shirt, a cap, a mug or a bumper sticker with the slogan,

and students who resist the urge tend to purchase before they leave.

According to Simon Anholt (2005), a well known location branding theorist, most of the

slogans developed to represent locations are “in fact the sad result of a committee’s attempt to

keep everyone happy by packaging several conflicting agendas into a single statement, and it’s

not surprising they often end up sounding bland,” (Anholt, 2005, p.127). However, this is not the

case of Ithaca’s ‘Ithaca is Gorges’ slogan, a locally created identity building phrase that

represents local priorities and individuality created by a local man to represent all local

characteristics. The slogan has taken root so deeply because of its ability to represent everything

from the native landscape to the products, consciousness and culture.

Despite efforts to veer away and develop new brands, ‘Ithaca is Gorges’ always

resurfaces as the conqueror and the most powerful brand for the area. According to McPheeters,

“We have all come back to ‘Ithaca is Gorges’ for several reasons: one is that it is a tagline

that’s known. It is internationally known. We have examples from newspapers seeing

people wearing the ‘Ithaca is Gorges’ teeshirt all over the world. You can hardly travel

anywhere where you don’t see an ‘Ithaca is Gorges’ bumper sticker… It’s a known label

and because Cornell and Ithaca College are here we have this ever increasing number of

people who understand what Ithaca is and have been here and lived here for

sometime,” (McPheeters, 2008).

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The bumper stickers and teeshirts bearing the logo have been seen around the world, from

France to China, and after Howard Cogan’s death in February 2008, articles and blogs were

published in countries such as Moldova (Moldova.org, 2008) and England (Kweskin, 2008).

What continues to spark this catchphrase’s tipping point is simply its accessibility.

Cogan graciously gave permission to anyone who wanted to reproduce the slogan, as long as the

original form and lettering were used. No fees. No rights. There is no official or legal link that

attaches Cogan’s name to the brand. This completely goes against what many consider to be the

maxim of place branding: the need for a coordinated, well developed ownership, and highly

organized management of place campaigns (Anholt, 2005). ‘Ithaca is Gorges’, thanks to Cogan,

defied tradition in a way that not only placed the power of the local brand in the hands of its true

owners, the public audience, but also typified Ithaca’s progressive, activist attitude, an act that

was incorporated into the brand image itself. As a result, the grassroots momentum of the ‘Ithaca

is Gorges’ brand pushed itself to the hilt without any organized management, promotion or

spending.

However, to say that this underground buildup is solely responsible for the city and

county’s development into an unexpected, well branded area without management is to be naive.

This slogan and town’s promotion is interconnected to a web of promotional campaigns and

activities throughout the Finger Lakes region, a region in which Ithaca is heavily dependant on

for national and international promotion. The area is highly promoted through a number of joint

Chamber of Commerce ventures as well as the Finger Lakes Visitor Connection, which works to

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gather research and balance a multiplicity of regional marketing endeavors ranging from

promotion of wineries, historic sites, health spas, and nature reserves and parks.

BRANDING

The human memory is only capable of retaining a limited amount of information. As a

result, we are forced to construct summaries of the many tidbits of knowledge we actually do

absorb, packaging them tightly and consolidating the overload. Often, these shorthand specks of

memory are ignored and relegated to a gigantic matrix of items, people and places that we will

never have, by no means know, and on no account visit. Yet, we remember them nonetheless, and

armed with these few simply clichés, we are able to develop the background of our opinions and

navigate through the complexity of the modern world (Anholt, 2005; Anholt 2007). However,

there comes a point when these summaries just will not suffice, a time when our interest is

piqued; and it is this point that forces us to delve into these specks of simplistic knowledge,

expanding them and refining the impressions that have for so long gone undeveloped.

This is the evolution of brands – the names, terms, signs, symbols and designs that make

up the summary of information in our minds to help us identify goods, services and places so that

we can differentiate them from one another. These brands are the backbone of our opinions and

enable us to develop and assign image to the world around us. According to David Weaver and

Laura Lawton, “Image is the sum of beliefs, attitudes and impressions held by a person or group

of people towards some phenomenon,” (Weaver and Lawton, 2006, p. 105). These images are

malleable and controllable. What transforms a simple opinion into a full fledged image is when it

is considered in combination with its name, identity and reputation. It is then that it becomes a

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brand, and by its creation it becomes a phenomenon that can be planned, designed, communicated

and built upon to develop and manage reputation (Anholt, 2007).

Through management of a brand, the brand identity evolves. Brand identity is the core

concept of the product that management of the brand works to clearly and distinctively express

(Anholt, 2007). What is particular about brand identity is that it becomes the stable core

personality and purpose that drives the brand no matter how advertising strategies,

communication tones, positioning statements and even logos are changed to fit target markets.

The brand image is the part that always remains intact (Crockett and Wood, 2003).

As Nicholas Ind (2003) aptly notes, “The reason brands have become so important is

because they are so good at helping to create efficient exchange,” (Ind, 2003, p.4). They allow the

concepts of the brand identity to be packaged in space and time to capture a moment in society,

link it to a product, service or place, and store it in the cognitive processes of the audience as the

brand image. When we manage brands effectively we are also managing humanity and society as

well (Ryder 2003).

Brands in themselves are microworlds of society, representing the values and culture

that surrounds them and incorporating this culture into the brand image. According to Ian Ryder

(2003), “The complex social rules and behavioral patterns are all pathways that brands must

tread,” (Ryder, 2003, p.145). Brands must behave much like people, respecting cultural and

communication norms that are so deeply engrained in society; and like people, brands must

incorporate historical context and historical knowledge into its identity, thereby completely

embracing its assumed humanity.

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Yet, as mentioned before, all of this identity must be digestible and easy to process into a

brand image – and more importantly, easy to remember. A brand must take the rich and complex

information that is central to the brand information and synthesize the many different elements

into a single package. According to Simon Anholt (2005):

“The true art of branding is distillation, the art of extracting the concentrated essence of

something complex, so that its complexity can always be extracted back out of the

distillate, but it remains portable and easily memorable. The distillate, rather than actually

attempting to contain all the detail of the country in question, is simply the common

thread, the genetic constant, which underlies the basic commonality between the different

parts of the brand.” (Anholt, 2005, p.128)

The ‘Ithaca is Gorges’ slogan, for example, is able to condense the natural beauty, eco

consciousness, innovative atmosphere, agricultural economy, business development, and culture

with the intellectual wit of the local universities, creating a distilled and digestible package that

continues to retain and communicate the embedded complexity of the brand.

To retain this complexity, there must be an unusual degree of objectivity, or as Anholt

(2003) describes, “The ability to see yourself as other do, and to accept that this is, at least in

commercial terms, more important than the way you see yourself,” (Anholt, 2003, p.31). This

means that all aspects of identity need to be acknowledged, including the more negative

characteristics.

Complexity can also be added in a simple manner by partnering the identity of other

brands in cognitive association sets. According to Graham Brown, Laurence Chalip, Leo Jago and

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Trevor Mules (2003), brand association sets have been found to be useful descriptors of brand

identity: “When two brands are paired, the image of one brand can be strengthened when its

association set shares common elements,” (Brown, Chalip, Jago and Mules, 2003, p.285). He

adds that, “A transfer of brand image from one brand to another occurs when consumers

assimilate a node from one brand’s association set into the association set for the brand with

which it is paired,” (Brown, Chalip, Jago and Mules, 2003, p.285). Through these association

sets, brands can be echoed in consumers' minds when the partner brand is being consumed.

Furthermore, they can also create added strength in their numbers. This cognitive synergy in

brand alliances and associations can become more than the sum of either brand’s products.

The value created in brand associations and brand identity is realized in brand equity,

which Simon Anholt (2007) describes as:

“The idea that if a company, product or service acquires a positive, powerful and solid

reputation, this becomes an asset of enormous value: probably more valuable, in fact,

than all the tangible assets of the organization itself, because it represents the company’s

ability to continue to trade at a healthy margin for as long as its brand image stays intact.”

(Anholt, 2007, p.6)

Brand equity gives brands added value over the mere commodities and products because they are

an infinitely sustainable resource. Their value resides in the minds of those that consume them,

not in the hands of those that produced them. As a result, once the cognitive shortcut is

developed, and as long as it remains intact, the value of a brand remains at a stable, if not

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increasing in worth. And luckily, once created, these shortcuts are surprisingly difficult to destroy

(Anholt, 2003).

PLACE BRANDING

The power and value of brands is often associated with commercial products and the

service sector; however, the same cognitive and identity components can also be applied to

locations. Place branding is the use of commercial branding techniques to add brand equity to

towns, cities and even countries.

Place branding is simply the conscious (or unconscious) use of publicity and marketing to

communicate a geographic location’s identity and image to a target audience (Morgan, Pritchard

and Pride, 2003). But despite the similarities of place promotion to consumerism the result is

much deeper. A location’s brand is, in essence, a metaphor for the richness possessed by that area

and the emotive and cognitive value given to it by people – any people.

Just like commercial brands, place brands are perceived in certain ways, both rightly and

wrongly, by groups of people. But unlike commercial products and services, place branding is not

merely about selling and earning profit. Place branding works to build reputation and establish

sustainable security for an area and those who reside, visit and work there. Place brands thus

embrace an entirely new level of breadth and depth that commercial marketing cannot approach

(Anholt, 2007).

A place brand’s agenda is by far more difficult, forcing a need for increased creativity,

consistency, truthfulness and effectiveness, with a higher level of liability. Furthermore, there is a

wider range of difficult fields that must be approached in place branding that the commercial

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arena can literally ignore. These fields range include development, promotion of tourism, inward

investment, talent and residential recruitment, external relations, social and cultural policy, urban

and environmental planning, media relations and more (Anholt, 2007). Yet, despite the difficulty

that this holistic total branding offers, the rewards are enormous, far outreaching the effectiveness

of any commercial campaign (Morgan, Pritchard and Pride, 2003).

Because the location brand is a descriptive impression, the image associated with the

place must be one that is grounded in reality. Michael F. Smith (2003) states, “Most

contemporary public relations research argues that one cannot ‘create’ an image; rather, places

must use what exists or can exist in the community and communicate about that ‘truth’,” (Smith,

2003, p.264). Thus, every location must use what it has readily available to communicate its

value to the rest of society. Luckily, locations have many resources to pull from. Every location is

able to develop its image from its geography, history, art, music, famous residents, industry, food

and innovation. By using a diversity of local aspects, a place brand is able to accumulate a

complexity that allows different angles of the location to be interwoven into a complex fabric.

This fabric leads to the development of message integrity that can give people images and

information about the area and can develop a shortcut of understanding that embodies answers to

all kinds of questions: from what the place looks like; what sort of people live three; what there is

to do; and a picture of the climate, food, culture and history (Anholt, 2007). These answers

resonate in the minds of consumers, establishing sustainability.

The relationship that people, both local and distant, develop with a place can have a

significant and longterm impact on the future of the location’s status on the worldwide

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marketplace. As Anholt (2003) notes, “Brand can profoundly shape its economic, cultural and

political destiny,” (Anholt, 2003, p.28). The brand acts as a powerful ambassador in

communicating the location’s image to the external (and may I add, internal) arena, particularly

where the distribution of ideas and products has an explicit location of origin. Working as an

representative for the place’s ambitions, the brand encourages inward investment and acts as a

magnet for talent, attracting both new residents and returning members of the community

(Anholt, 2003).

This emotional connection and identification is key in the development of the brand.

Nigel Morgan and Annette Pritchard (2003) aptly stated, “The battle for consumers in tomorrows

destination marketplace will be fought not over price but over hearts and minds,” (Morgan and

Pritchard, 2003, p. 60). The success of a brand lies in its ability to enhance its perceived utility,

desirability and quality by building off the social, emotional and identity value that it gives to its

consumers. These added values are the result of the branding effort – the ‘be it’ phenomenon that

has quickly replaced the ‘buy it’ mentality. People do not simply visit a location, they buy into

what it represents though an emotional relationship.

As a result, the good name and reputation of the place does not simply aid consumers in

the millions of purchasing decisions that they make, but affects choices and attitudes on a much

larger scale: from companies deciding where to build their infrastructure to areas that others

choose to market their products. Thus the reputation that location builds has a direct and

measurable impact on its engagement in the marketplace in both economic, social, political and

cultural ways (Anholt, 2007). It is not simply just a buying, selling or tourist impact and just like

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a manufacturer’s brand, a place brand provides the umbrella of trust, a guarantee of quality that

shades the number of subbrands that it houses. These subbrands can be anything from

universities and companies to social initiatives and products. They rely on the vitality of the main

place brand in order to keep their own brand intact.

TOURISM BRANDING

Often place branding is perceived by the outside as heavily reliant on tourism for its

establishment. Though it does involve tourism to some extent, the overvaluing of tourism in a

location brand inevitably may increase economic profits but will also develop an irrelevant,

unhelpful and even damaging image that resonates in other external initiatives, especially

promoting trade or inward investment (Anholt, 2005). The result is the need for the development

of holistic brands that benefit both the tourism industry as well other local industries and the

entire reputation on the worldwide marketplace.

However, it is also foolish to assume that tourism is not a major concern for any location

– it brings outside money, opportunities for cultural sharing and a free flow of new ideas and

perspectives into any community. Even if a destination is too expensive, too inaccessible, too

environmentally sensitive or too small to play host to a large number of visitors, a tourist brand

can still act as an indispensable channel to communicate, enlighten, and attract audiences about

am image location (Anholt, 2007).

In the United States, tourism is big business. In 2002 more than one billion people

participated in domestic trips and an additional 48.5 million visitors came to the United States

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from other countries (Slater, 2003). In 2004, tourism accounted for more than 10 percent of the

global GDP, approximately $5.5 trillion in direct and indirect profit. As a result, tourism is on the

same global magnitude for profitability as agriculture and mining (Weaver and Lawton, 2006).

According to David Weaver and Laura Lawton (2006), tourism is the sum of the

processes, actions, and outcomes arising from the interactions among “tourists, tourism suppliers,

host governments, host communities, origin governments, universities, community colleges and

nongovernmental organizations, in the process of attracting, transporting, hosting and managing

tourists and other visitors,” (Weaver and Lawton, 2003, p.3). The diversity of components

incorporated into tourism means that tourism is strongly connected to almost every field of study,

from history, sociology, anthropology and psychology to political science, economics, law,

business management and marketing, and of course agriculture, ecology and geography (Weaver

and Lawton, 2006).

Tourism also offers a distinctive and specific communication channel that no other

channel can offer to a place: a set of people who have first hand knowledge of a place and can

bring back these experiences in the form of memories to share with people in their hometowns.

Even more, the tourists do not simply spread their memories, but also the tangible objects that

they collected during their travels. Tourists are often the vehicle for the worldwide spread of

items affiliated with or representing the brand, such as ‘Ithaca is Gorges’ tshirts, mugs, and

bumper stickers. Nothing screams awareness building like a bright green branded sweatshirt

bearing location’s name.

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What makes these tourism products, as well as local arts, crafts and food, particularly

important is that they are characterized by their inseparability from the location they come from.

Tourism products and services are produced and consumed in the same places, furthering the

emotional significance of the location every time they are consumed – for both residents and

tourists alike(Weaver and Lawton, 2006).

Yet, to eventuate an actual visit, potential tourists must obviously be aware of a location’s

existence, but furthermore, they must have an understanding of what makes it different. This

differentiation is the strongest factor in establishing the reputation tourist destinations, as well as

a place brand.

Fred Bonn, director of Ithaca/Tompkins County Conventions and Visitors Bureau,

classifies tourism infrastructure into two types: attractions and attractors. “An attractor is an

element of our community that causes people to get up and move their feet, get into their car and

drive here specific to that purpose. Cornell is an attractor. The state parks are an attractor. The

lake is an attractor. Attractions are the things that people discover that enrich their visit while they

are here,” (Bonn, 2008). Both attractions and attractors support the differentiation of one location

from another and develop the location as a branded tourism spot – or even just a great place to

live.

These attractions and attractors can be further divided into preexisting and created

assets. Preexisting assets are those that are usually tied to geography and climate: the grandeur of

the waterfalls, the fish in the lakes, the wind for sailing, the mountains and forests, and the fertile

ground. Created assets are generally more connected to the entertainment and tourism support

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infrastructure: playhouses and theatres, universities, bed and breakfasts, monuments, and

museums. Each distinction carries a different weight in individual tourism markets but each

provide distinctly appealing resources for locations. As a result, marketing a place to tourists must

be attentive to all the small and surprisingly important details associated with the tourism

industry.

Weaver and Lawton (2006) argue that there are 11 attributes that both preexisting and

created assets possess: ownership, orientation, authenticity, scarcity, status, market, image,

context, spatial configuration, accessibility and carrying capacity. All of these elements carry

with them distinctive characteristics that affect their use within the tourism industry.

The first two attributes, ownership and orientation, are connected to the way that assets

are operated. Assets can be either privately or publicly owned and oriented in a nonprofit or for

profit way. These characteristics have a large impact on the way that the asset is managed as well

as the way that it is experienced (Weaver and Lawton, 2006).Each method of carries a distinct

positive and negative value. Publicly owned assets tend to be less dependent on visitation for the

financial stability and management sustainability and often more oriented towards the nonprofit

sector, allowing them to be highly stable. Their management may lack the sparkle that private

assets possess, yet they are reliable and less expensive – which also means that they are often

more populated and crowded. Private assets tend to be more capitalistic in their financial base and

more dependant on consumers. As a result, the experience is often higher quality in order to

attract the consumers, which in turn is reflected in higher price. Furthermore, access is generally

either more limited or reserved in nature.

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Weaver and Lawton (2006) argue that authenticity is the genuineness or imitation

characteristics an asset possesses. Often this aspect is also connected to scarcity because genuine

attracting assets tend to be more unique and therefore harder to come by. Imitation assets, on the

other hand, are more ubiquitous and thus easier to find in other areas. Weaver and Lawton’s use

of status indicates that resources are either primary and iconic or secondary and peripheral. This

is similar to the distinction between attractors and attractions and also ties back to the authenticity

and scarcity of the item giving primary status to those that are more genuine and unique.

Weaver and Lawton’s (2006) use of market and image is twofold, applying both to

tourists and residents. Resources can apply to specific markets for both local residents and tourist

visitors. Often these markets are either niche or inclusive. Image can either be familiar or

unfamiliar and negative or positive. The way people envision these resources plays heavily into

the way that they are used for both local and tourist purposes (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). Often

residents especially have negative images of attracting assets that are developed primarily for

tourists, avoiding them and seeing them as unfamiliar in connection to their local identity. This

illustrates the context that is associated with the resources, the compatibility or incompatibility

with the local surroundings.

The last three attributes are area dependent. Spatial configuration implies that assets can

either be grouped into nodal clusters or spread out in an areal orientation. This often can affect

their accessibility by impacting the amount of space and time that each offers, and even the

affordability. It also can impact the carrying capacity by providing the amount of room available

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to provide services, housing and recreation freedom without having an impact on the local

environment (Weaver and Lawton, 2006).

Seasonality can also be a powerful pull factor for tourists, bringing visitors to enjoy the

cyclic pleasures that an area has to offer. According to Richard D. Mitchell and C. Michael Hall

(2000), there are five forms of tourism seasonality: natural, sporting season, institutionalized,

inertia or tradition and social pressure or fashion.

Natural seasonality is heavily connected to climate (Mitchell and Hall, 2003), especially

in the higher latitudes. In general people are more drawn to particular climates in specific places –

and this does not always mean warmer temperatures. For instance, in wine regions tourists are

drawn to the harvest season in late fall and many people who live in warm regions find appeal in

visiting northern areas during the winter to experience snowfall and the winter wonderland it

provides.

Sporting season can also be influenced by climactic and natural cycles but can also

dissociate from environmental factors (Mitchelll and Hall, 2000). Examples of climactic sporting

seasons include surfing in the summer or skiing in the winter. An example of nonclimactic

sporting seasons include sporting events where people routinely return to locations to watch their

favorite teams or sports stars (Louisville for the Kentucky Derby, New York City for the U.S.

Tennis Open, Watkins Glen for NASCAR, and Newport for the America’s Cup Regatta).

Institutionalized seasonality reflects the sociopolitical calendar. Examples would include

the summer and winter recesses that accompany the school year or the public holidays that enable

people to take off of work to travel (Mitchell and Hall, 2003). I would add that this also includes

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an element of religion such as when people congregate for Christmas, make journeys to their

religious Mecca, or spend Rosh Hashanah with their families out of town.

Inertia and tradition seasonality occurs when people continue to travel despite a change in

context (Mitchell and Hall, 2003). An example of this is when parents continue to take trips

during the school holidays even when their children have graduated.

Lastly are social pressure and fashion (Mitchell and Hall, 2003). Locations can be

particularly susceptible for two reasons: locations themselves can fall in and out of fashion (for

instance Cancun has replaced Orlando as a popular college spring break destination) and the

activities affiliated with destinations can become less popular. Both reasons are often connected

to the choices that the privileged elite make in their tourism decisions, which are then reflected in

the general populaces devoted imitation of their actions.

A destination brand packages these desired placeproducts in terms of image and distinct

attractions and through the packaging creates a prearrival framework for tourists to see and

understand the location. Can Seng Ooi (2003) says, “Basically, the brand offers a story around

which tourists can build their experiences. The brand helps tourists to develop a consistent and

meaningful sense of place, and offers a ‘brand experience’,” (Seng Ooi, 2003, p.256). In other

words, preconceived ideas and previsit images form the basis for tourists to interpret their own

experiences in a location. Slater (2003) even argues that these preconceived notions can motivate

tourists to be more engaged or inclined to partake in local culture and assets. The result is that

brand puts a sort of glaze on the lenses through which tourists view the destination, directing their

attention and shaping their tourism experiences (Seng Ooi, 2003).

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In the case of Ithaca, these rosecolored glasses enables tourists to see Ithaca as the sort

of utopia that is connected to its brand: a paradise for ‘green’ consciousness, arts and music,

wine, academia and local foods and farmer’s markets. The result is that the tourists are able to see

past the inadequacies that would come from the disillusionment of a longterm stay and process

Ithaca only as they are told they would by the brand.

GEOGRAPHIC BRAND

On a basic level, what creates a city’s appeal is the literal, the tangible, and people’s

perception of it. Opinions are reliant on perceptions of how pleasant it is to be outdoors and

wander the city, how beautiful the appearance and what is offered to residents, visitors,

businesses and immigrants. These tangibles can vary from landscape to public amenities and

town architecture to educational opportunities (Anholt, 2007), but in the end their presence, or

lack thereof, can be a strong source of competitive advantage for the location. After all, the

combination can add up to a unique talking point and, as Joseph Cortright (2006) points out, “In a

world of global competition, a strategy of ‘pretty much the same, maybe cheaper’ is a recipe for

mediocrity and economic stagnation,” (Cortright, 2006, p.3).

For Ithaca, N.Y., the basic advantage is local geographic and surface level resources.

Ithaca is engulfed by a region of natural beauty and environmental splendor. The geography of

the Tompkins County is an extreme asset in terms of atmosphere, tourist attraction, and

irreplaceable distinctiveness.

Ithaca possesses a truly distinctive topography that sets its appearance apart, particularly

in the realm of tourism. Carved by a pair of Ice Ages, glaciers molded the landscape into a

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dramatic and awe inspiring series of 11 narrow, horizontal lakes now known as the Finger Lakes.

The retreating glaciers left behind a gently undulating landscape that, with time, streams and

rivulets carved into, leaving deep gorges in the shale subsoil and regolith. The deep gorges are

filled with multiple series of waterfalls that cascade down to the steep mountainsides.

As a result of this striking scenery, Tompkins County is home to four state parks, seven

state and national forests, and six other parks and trail systems. Furthermore, three of the four

state parks are gorge parks making Tompkins County home to half of all the gorge parks in the

entire New York State (Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, 2008).

This landscape has become one of the key attractions for residents and visitors alike and

parks and striking scenery represent an incredible pull factor. According to Jean McPheeters, the

president of the Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, the chamber has conducted a number

of studies and found that next to the colleges with their student and parent visitors, the main

reason that people come to Ithaca is the outdoors. They come to see the gorgeous lake and the

cascading waterfalls (McPheeters, 2008). This is altogether supported by the rising national and

international trend towards natural tourism. According to David Weaver and Laura Lawton

(2006), parks and protected areas are currently among the most popular tourism attractions on

both the international and domestic tourism marketplace.

Weaver and Lawton also note that of all significant tourism attractions there is one type

of attraction that claims a particular significance in its ability to define an area: “Rivers and

waterfalls. Waterfalls in particular hold a strong inherent aesthetic appeal for many people, and

often constitute a core iconic attraction around which secondary attractions, and sometimes entire

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resort communities, are established,” (Weaver and Lawton, 2006, p.133). Ithaca lays claim to

over 150 of these aesthetic beauties within a 10 mile radius from the downtown district, not

including the small waterfalls that have not been named. Many of these waterfalls are even

located within the downtown district itself (Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, 2008).

Taughannock Falls contributes largely to this appeal with its larger than life presence. Its 215 foot

height gives Taughannock Falls 33 feet more freefalling vertical drop than Niagara Falls and

places it as the highest freefalling waterfall in the Northeast and one of the highest waterfalls of

any kind east of the Rocky Mountains (Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, 2008; Pratt

and Haine, 2007).

The beautiful landscape offers the perfect setting for the outdoor enthusiast. The vast

pastoral backdrop has only been emphasized by the local community’s efforts to make it

accessible, not only for tourist use but for their own as well. The State Forests are littered with

hiking trails for trekkers of all calibers and a number of them are accessible to the onslaught of

rugged mountainbikers. In fact, in 2002 Bike Magazine named Ithaca one of the five best

mountain biking towns in America (Pratt and Haine, 2007). For the onroad bikers there is the 87

mile long Scenic Byway, a roadway encircling Cayuga Lake, which offers the perfect long

distance ride past the Cayuga Lake wineries and the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge at the

opposite end of the lake (Cayuga Lake Scenic Byway, 2007).

The Central Finger Lakes Region is also the home of the crown jewel of trekking in the

New York State: The Finger Lakes Trail. The trail is 562.9 miles long, reaching from the New

York State border with Pennsylvania in Allegany State Park to the Long Path in the Catskill

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Forest Preserve. In addition to the main trail, there are five branch trails and 15 loop trails that

extend the main trail by 236 miles (Finger Lakes Tourism Alliance, 2007). The result is that the

hiker’s perfect trail arches across the southern end of the Finger Lakes going directly through

Ithaca.

The Finger Lakes National Forest offers not only 33.75 miles of hiking and biking, but

opportunities for snowmobiling and fourwheeling on 12.5 miles of their trail system, horseback

riding on 24.5 miles, and crosscountry skiing on 31.5 miles (USDA Forest Service, 2008). There

are also three railroads that have been converted into wilderness walks and recreation trails: the

Jim Schung Trail, East Hill Recreation Way, and South Hill Recreation Way (Ithaca/Tompkins

County Convention and Visitors Bureau, 2008a).

For the sportsman, there is ample hunting and fishing. Hunters enjoy the abundance of

whitetail deer, Canadian geese, ducks and wild turkey. Fishers have many fishing options with

the 40 mile long Cayuga Lake that spans across 42,496 acres, as well as the 102 miles of trout

streams, 28 miles of warm water streams and various small lakes and ponds (Ithaca/Tompkins

County Convention and Visitors Bureau, 2008a). All together these lakes and tributaries offer

128 species of fish. Sports Afield magazine even named Cayuga Lake one of the top 10 bass

fishing lakes (Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, 2008). In 2001 Fish and Fly Magazine

also named Ithaca as an area for the best fly fishing in North America (Stoff, 2008).

The result is that the simple location is enough to define Ithaca and the area around it. Its

natural beauty and well preserved environmentally clean areas offer the brand in itself. The

strength of the message that nature has bestowed on Ithaca’s presence shows itself through the

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way the city has been designed around the natural landmarks and the way that the people use and

cherish the environmental benefits of the region. It is this message and strength that gave Howard

Cogan his utmost inspiration and it is why the topography was a natural muse for the local brand:

‘Ithaca is Gorges.’

EXPERIENCE TOURISM

Jan Slater (2003) noted, “The branded destination is an experience, not just a place to

go,” (Slater, 2003, p.227). More and more people are attracted not just to a place, but how it is

interpreted into an experience. This applies not only to tourists, but to residents as well. People’s

time is becoming more and more limited. “Choice of holiday destination is a significant lifestyle

indicator for today’s aspirational consumers and the places where they choose to spend their

squeezed vacation time and hard earned income increasingly have to have emotional appeal, high

conversational capital and even celebrity value,” (Morgan, Pritchard and Pride, 2003, p.4). People

do not want to simply hear the physical attributes, but experience them and all that surrounds

them.

Niche tourism is growing in significance as people turn to experience models of travel.

According to Shane R. Crockett and Leiza J. Wood (2003), “As travelers become more

experienced, they are seeking more personalized and interactive experiences,” (Crockett and

Wood, 2003, p.196). Tourists are no longer looking for the carbon copied white sandy beaches or

the simple presence of mountains and lakes; they are looking for the more distinctive

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sociocultural and active aspects of locations. A key driver for experience travel is that people are

now looking to fulfill their passions through travel and these passions can be as varied as the

imagination: the best reefs for scuba, the most difficult hiking trails, the highest bungee jump, the

most varied wildflowers, the best wines, the most nightlife, and the most ecofriendly

communities. All of these different experiences attract distinct people who are looking for ways

to fulfill these passions.

Yet, as with all passions, they are subject to the ebb and flow of popularity. When place

brands are solely built off of one niche they can become incredibly vulnerable. When that activity

goes out of style, the effects can be devastating and force the need for a rebranding campaign.

The decline in popularity of particular activities is particularly significant for locations in that it

does not represent a failure on the part of the location’s brand, but a change in the niche tourism

preferences (Mitchell and Hall, 2003).

Peter Williams and Karim Dossa (2003) categorized the experiential public into two

types of persons: immersionists and generalists. These two groups express their desire for lively

activity based travel in distinct ways.

Immersionists are motivated by being able to experience scenic, environmentally clean

regions where they are able to safely interact with their local surroundings and the native

residents in a sustainable way. Often emphatic of the importance of natural environments and

persona, and inclined towards social discovery and physical activity, immersionists greatly value

the opportunity and ability to increase their knowledge of the region, its native ecosystem,

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historical significance and local culture, and become immersed in a variety of activities (Williams

and Dossa, 2003).

Generalists are also motivated by experience but are more often focused on the

opportunity to partake in good food, predeveloped interactive attractions, interpreted natural

areas, unique arts and crafts that can be interpreted as souvenirs, and urban lifestyle. For

generalists, the incorporation of festivals, concerts and events mean a diversification of activity

options to amplify and accentuate their experiential agendas (Williams and Dossa, 2003). These

are the Disney World tourists, those who require constant entertainment but little local infusion in

the activities.

What is unique to Ithaca is that there are distinctive characteristics of the local

environment, both geographical and social, that heightens the distinctions between immersionists

and generalists. Typically in Ithaca there are two categories of participants which Stephen

Kimball of Tompkins County Area Development portrays as:

“Two kinds of tourists; I call them the puretourists who are here for being a tourist in

Ithaca and there’s the connected visitors who are here because their kids are going to

Cornell or I.C. [Ithaca College]. So they wouldn’t just come here because it’s Ithaca.

They are coming here because they have some other connections, so they’re doing some

things but they would come here because it’s the Finger Lakes. They aren’t here to tour

every day,” (Kimball, 2008).

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The two groups of people that he is referring to are the residents and tourists that are affiliated

with Ithaca, its spirit and community, and the people associated with the colleges, the ones who

would come to Cornell and Ithaca College despite its location.

Typically residents and puretourists are the Ithaca enthusiasts – the immersionist

population that learns about Ithaca and all that it has to offer and explore it off the beaten track.

They interact with activities on a physical and personal level whether it is their first time or a

quotidian experience. Having a strong local immersionist group has influenced the local

infrastructure in the entirety of Tompkins County and stimulated the development and sustenance

of untouched natural areas, low maintenance “rails to trails” in which abandoned railroads have

been converted to hiking and biking trails, leavenotrace camping, intimate and engaging theatre

and lectures, meettheartist opportunities, satellite and remote attractions in small unpromoted

areas, and a plethora of off the beaten track opportunities that enable self discovery and

interaction opportunities to meet with others.

In Ithaca, typically the generalist community is primarily affiliated with the colleges; the

student body, potential students, their families, and those coming to partake in college events,

such as graduations, reunions, and freshman weekend. For these generalists, Ithaca is not the

main attractor for their residence or visit and is a peripheral bonus to their primary college

experiences. As a result, many are not looking to get indepth knowledge or interpersonal

relationships with the city, but to merely skim the surface. They want to visit the galleries and see

the art but not necessarily meet the artists. They want to buy local wine and beer but not take the

exhaustive tours of the wineries or microbreweries. They want to stroll the parks but not

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necessarily take a rugged hike through the gorges or a trek along the Finger Lakes Trail. And the

lake offers a dinner cruise, not a handson sailing experience or a bountiful day of fishing.

The result is that Ithaca is primarily focused on the handson, immersionist community

but maintains transient generalist population. There is a heavy desire for deep understanding, and

an active component that follows through on this urge. According to Williams and Dossa (2003)

this imbalance of immersionists and generalists contradicts the norms. Usually there is a higher

proliferation of generalists. It is this unique experience based component that sets Ithaca apart.

CULTURE MARKETING

A good starting point for any location on their quest to develop their reputation is to look

at their most valuable asset: the people who live there. This resource brings to the table an

irreplaceable set of skills, aspirations and culture that is well equipped to determine a credible,

sustainable and effective plan that far outpaces any cooked up public relations tactic (Anholt,

2003). The cultural aspect is uniquely linked to the location, but furthermore, it deals with non

commercial activities. As a result, it brings a dignifying and enriching value by illustrating the

spiritual and intellectual qualities of local people and the institutions that they surround

themselves with.

Culture provides a background of distinctiveness in two ways: the particular attitudes and

spirit of the people, but also the extent to which local cultural activities are participated in, in

contrast to the passive broadcast of mainstream media. “Americans engage in a wide variety of

pastimes and chose to spend their disposable incomes in a wide variety of ways. Some of these

variations reflect the pronounced regional and local preferences,’ (Cortright, 2006, p.46), and

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Ithaca’s distinctive local blend of opportunities highlights the intrinsic characteristics of the local

culture: beautiful, smart, and at all times unexpected.

With three established theatres (and more at the colleges), lectures, museums, and

galleries, there is a strong and everpresent manifestation of the arts in the local atmosphere.

Added creativity and thoughtfulness is omnipresent thanks to the pervasiveness of the universities

that offer lectures and events throughout the year and sporting events for the general public. And

then there are always the parks; their multiplicity and breadth illustrates that the love of nature is

of utmost importance. This is also reflected in the number, size and quality of local agriculture

ventures, including a number of farmers markets, cooperative markets, and the gigantic Ithaca

Farmers’ Market.

The impact that all of these characteristics have on the local “goingons” is significant in

expressing Ithaca’s inner spirit. For most places culture and geography have a very distinctive

presence in the local identity, but Ithaca truly represents these two characteristics by combining

them in a harmonious synergy. This is then elaborated by the city’s love and adoration of

diversity and options.

Ithaca is a community of character, diverse in backgrounds and extravagant in beliefs: a

place of spiritual plethora and political variety. I have often noted that Ithaca is the only place that

I could ever see a staunch Republican farmer married to a braburning, metropolitan business

woman and see them live happily ever after, and perhaps even start their own international

organic agricultural business. This diversity and unity has motivated the city, creating a passion

and spirit that is reflected back as a true love of Ithaca itself.

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For many of these defining characteristics of the local culture, there are few, if any,

statistics and measures to look at. As Joseph Cortright (2006) mentions, “There are many

dimensions for distinctiveness, and because each community has its own special strengths and

characteristics, no single measure or set of measures can capture this adequately,” (Cortright,

20006, p.45). The only way to understand a location is to be there and be immersed in the culture

and atmosphere. The official travel guide for the area puts this in perspective with its description

of who Ithacans are:

“What makes Ithaca unique? Is it the towering waterfalls, lush, iceage gorges, endless

panoramic views? Is it the hiking, the biking, the boating? Is it the beauty of Cayuga

Lakes, the longest of the Finger Lakes? Perhaps. But perhaps it’s something more. Maybe

it’s the buzz from Cornell University and Ithaca College. You’ll feel it everywhere – in

our museums, out galleries, our many restaurants. You hear it in our theatres, our

nightclubs, out festivals. You see it downtown on our pedestrian mall, the Ithaca

Commons, where PhDs cross paths with street musicians [and sometimes are even one in

the same!], and families stroll the solar system on an interactive ‘planet walk.’ You can’t

put your finger on it, but there’s something special going on here. The bumperstickers say

‘Ithaca is Gorges,’ but it’s more than that,” (Ithaca/Tompkins County Convention and

Visitors Bureau, 2008a).

It is this phenomenon that you can’t quite put your finger on but you feel wholeheartedly that

makes Ithaca different, distinct, and desirable. And these distinctions are what shapes the future

of the city.

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In destination branding, many locations are often heavily reliant on their literal

description making one seaside beach quite indistinguishable from another and one snowcapped

mountain range simply a vantage point to see another snowcapped mountain. By using culture as

a representation of an area, the location is provided with the one significant element that is absent

in commercial brands but that locations cannot do without: dignity. As Anholt notes, “Culture is,

if you like, the rich harmonic accompaniment to the simple, accessible, easily memorable melody

of commercial competitive advantage. You can whistle a country’s commercial brand, and not its

cultural counterpoint; but the former is worth very much less without the later,” (Anholt, 2005, p.

136).

This can be seen in the Tompkins County Area Development initiatives that work to

bring businesses to Ithaca. Their campaigns emphasize the nearness of Cornell and other

academic and business benefits, but more importantly predominantly tout the strong cultural and

social aspects of the community that would benefit their employees as well as their company. In

effect, the major selling point for bringing companies to Ithaca is the people and the way that they

live their lives. Ithaca’s commerce and economy may be strong, but in the end Ithaca would be

just another provincial city without its particular flavor of people, activities and culture.

Culture provides the metaphor that weaves together the many different local facets in the

mind of both the local and distant consumer, allowing people to deduce a great deal about the

inner spirit and qualities of the location (Anholt, 2007). Anholt notes, “Culture plays an essential

role in the process of enriching a country’s [or location’s] brand image, driving the process from

initial shorthand of media communications toward a fuller and more durable understanding of the

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country and its values,” (Anholt, 2005, p.136). Culture is the sole power that takes clichés and

morphs them into fair, believable and humanist brands that are rooted in truth and history. Culture

eloquently communicates to all publics, eliminating the element of suspicion because culture is

selfevidently not for sale (Anholt, 2007). Despite the fact that it may work more slowly, needing

more education and a deeper focus and thought process on the part of the consumer, its effects are

worthwhile, and in a way, even reflects on the city itself.

In the end, culture is the center of promoting a continued renaissance by promoting a

more inclusive and sustainable community. It “creates jobs, attracts investment and enriches the

lives of people who live and work in and visit the city,” (AliKnight and Robertson, 2006, p.6).

ITHACA’S ARTS

The expression of a location’s internal spirit can be exemplified by the community’s

participation in the arts. Jane AliKnight and Martin Robertson (2006) note,

“The arts are seen to be an integral part of any celebration of a country’s history and

culture. Traditionally, the arts were seen to incorporate works and activities such as

classical music, opera, theatre, ballet, painting (fine art) and sculpture (Hughes, 2000).

However, the arts today include a wider collection of activities such as contemporary

dance, film, popular music and various components of visual arts. Indeed, the programme

of any international arts festival reflects the diversity of contemporary arts and its

audience base,” (AliKnight and Robertson, 2006, p.4).

With a verve for the expression of diversity, the local artistic flare within Ithaca and Tompkins

County has positioned the area as a mecca for locally grown and internationally known visual and

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performing artists. Actors, musicians, painters, dancers, metalworkers, sculptors, woodworkers,

and handicraftmakers find Ithaca and use the local effervescence to express a deep and

gratifyingly varied plethora of artistic pleasures, products and personalities.

Most locations amplify their primary artistic passion through a single channel of

creativity: New Orleans screams the blues; Chicago has jazz; Los Angeles dotes on movies and

mainstream pop; New York has its Broadway performances and onstage entertainment; San

Francisco boasts its minimalist sculptor Richard Serra and other offbeat visual artists. Ithaca, on

the other hand, reflects its need for choice and love of alternatives in all of its artistic selection.

Ithaca is home to a number of distinctly impressive arts. The music community literally

comprises the entire Ithaca community in general everyone is a musician in Ithaca, but not

simply a musician but a worldclass artist who travels and performs on a regular basis. The

Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University is a work of architectural art in itself

designed by the renowned I.M. Pei but also home to pieces by the masters and iconoclasts. At one

point the home to E.B. White and Emin L. Nabakoff, who supposedly wrote his infamous Lolita

while residing in one of Ithaca’s downtown apartments, Ithaca is still home to a strong group of

playwrights, fiction writers and poets (Bossard, 2008). And even stronger is the local theatrical

community that makes up the heart of the local arts society.

Performance arts is engrained into the local calendar if not just in the hearts and minds of

the residents. With semester end performances at both of the colleges, the annual Christmas

Nutcracker Ballet put on by the local Ithaca Ballet, and the summer season Hanger Theatre

performances, there is a cyclic devotion to the local stage. The city has nine community theatre

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groups, three colleges with their own theatre and music groups, and several dance organizations

(Pratt and Haine, 2007). The three main theatres are the Kitchen Theatre, Hanger Theatre and

State Theatre.

The Kitchen Theatre, well known as simply ‘the Kitchen,’ is the brainchild of Rachel

Lampert, a well published playwright and highly experienced actress. A small and intimate

performance space, with only 73 seats, the kitchen incubates a large number of fresh theatrical

performances, regional premiers and contemporary ‘classics,’ (Tompkins County Chamber of

Commerce, 2008). The true value of the Kitchen is that it is a huge resource for up and coming

playwrights to premier their works. Rachel Lampert herself is always cooking up, directing and

even performing a number of new originals – but the stage also provides the opportunity for

others to get out there and see their works come to life. Adam Bock is one of these new

playwrights who has premiered his shows in Ithaca at ‘the Kitchen,’ such as A Drunken City, and

had some success in New York City. “He’s growing a name,” said Bossard, “and a lot of it has to

do with his work at the Kitchen Theatre,” (Bossard, 2008).

The Hanger Theatre is an old airplane hanger next to Cayuga Lake. Only operated for

performances during the summer months, the Hanger is “the summer stock” of Ithaca (Bossard,

2008). It brings together local and outside performers to offer modern and innovative

performances as well as the traditional and flawless classics. These shows include musicals,

dramas, comedies, and solo acts. While their performances are in the summer, the Hanger

operates as a yearround theater company doing a lot of work in the schools to foster appreciation

of performing arts. In this vein, they also offer childcentered afternoon productions in the

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summer to encourage involvement in child theatre and a summer camp to hone the passions of the

next generation of local performers (Bossard, 2008).

The major venue for music in Ithaca is new newly revived historic, 1,600seat vaudeville

theatre. The State Theatre, built in 1915 and transformed into a Moorish and Renaissance Revival

performance space that incorporated the collegiate Gothic symbolism of Cornell in 1928, has

flourished as the premier entertainment venue for a variety of genres since its inception –

exhibiting burlesque, movies, plays, Broadway tours, dance performances, and music concerts in

a series of rebirths (Historic Ithaca and the State Theatre, 2008).

Now operated by Historic Ithaca, the theater is host to some of the most eclectic and

significant music artists in the area (Historic Ithaca and the State Theatre, 2008). Recent acts

alone have included: the roots and blues legend, Taj Mahal; the Vienna Boys Choir formed in

1498 by Emperor Maximillian; the Glenn Miller Orchestra with its big band jazz and swing; the

son of African Legend Ali Farka Toure, the renouned Vieux Farka Toure; South African cultural

emissaries Ladysmith Black Mambazo; the Parisbased, Beninborn funk, salsa, jazz, rumba and

makossa queen, Angelique Kidjo; the angelvoiced Tibetian Yungchen Lhamo; Lyle Lovett; and

Los Lobos. The State Theatre has become such a center of Ithacan life that it even plays host to a

number of cultural and influential events. These events include community lectures and readings,

but also such magnificent events as the hosting of the Dali Lama (Historic Ithaca and the State

Theatre, 2008).

In the music arena, Ithaca is known to be “one of the most varied music scenes outside of

the Big Apple,” (Pratt and Haine, 2007, p.5). Every night in Ithaca is a whirlwind of different

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styles. The city is host to both local and international groups playing classical, jazz, blues, folk,

heavymetal, punk, rap, rhythm and blues, reggae, funk, emo, country, bluegrass, rock and roll,

swing, and even the sounds of what has been called ‘neoprimitive bug music’ (Pratt and Haine,

2007).

According to Brett Bossard, executive director of the Community Arts Partnership,

“Musically we have an amazingly diverse group of performers – everything from old time music

to jazz to some really significant hard rock and modern rock, and even some pop and a cappella

groups. It’s a broad spectrum” (Bossard, 2008). He dubs this aura the “Ithaca Mystique,” the

eclectic combination of artists, audience members and music supporters that motivates musicians

and enables the vivacity that typifies the local music scene.

The variety extends beyond the genre distinctions to the venues themselves, offering even

more choice and options to the clientele. Country bars, local pubs, chic lounges, colleges,

theatres, wineries, small cafés, state parks and open air pavilions offer a home for bands, quartets,

ensembles, a cappella groups, and solo acts to perform.

While the plethora of hotspots in Ithaca play host to groups passing through or

internationally renowned headliner acts, local groups are traveling across the glove, sharing their

homegrown Ithaca flare with worldwide audiences. “It’s definitely a community that stretches,”

said Bossard (2008) about the Ithaca arts community. “There’s an understanding that while Ithaca

is the hub, the branches go pretty far out,” (Bossard, 2008).

But it isn’t simply the fact that there is this diversity and ‘mood’ that makes Ithaca’s

music scene distinctive. The fact is, that musicians are motivated – they are working on a

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business level playing in the venues and earning livings off of their music, but they are also

working on a grassroots simply to share their talents and enthusiasm. On Sunday, September 23,

2007 the Fall Creek neighborhood on Ithaca’s east side hosted what they have dubbed Porchfest –

a collaborative effort in which all of the local musicians living in Fall Creek area played music on

their front porches. More than 18 bands and artists participated, displaying their talents in the

open air showcase. As Bossard noted, “People literally were encouraged to take lawn chairs and

walk around the Fall Creek neighborhood and check out these people that were playing on their

porches. So, it was free concerts throughout the neighborhood and people came from all over

town to take part,” (Bossard, 2008). The result is that the audience was the key purpose of the

entire production. To emphasize the fact, the festival even arranged an afterperformance party in

Auburn Street “Triangle” Park and were encouraged to bring their own instruments for a

community wide jam session, bringing it down to the community and interpersonal level.

This communityoriented perspective is key to the way Ithaca interacts with artistic

creativity, and it extends beyond music into the other artistic forms. According to Bossard,

“We’re seeing more community arts now. Well certainly there’s visual artists all over

Ithaca and a variety that blends the distinction between folk art and fine art. There are

certainly dozens if not hundreds of folk artists – people who see artistry in the everyday –

that live in Ithaca. You see that in the way they live their lives and the way that they

present what they consider to be their art form; whether its for sale or just on people’s

houses. You see some really artful displays of creativity just around the homes of Ithaca,”

(Bossard, 2008).

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Ithaca has a unique emphasis on interaction with art that typifies its immersionist mentality.

People like to go out and experience art (whether it be music, visual arts or theatre) and make a

memory of the experience through facetoface encounters with artists who are in fact as original

as their works and performances.

This intimate interaction is highly encouraged through the Greater Ithaca Arts Trail, an

alliance of local artists who invite the public into their studios, homes and galleries to watch them

at work. The experience gives the artists a window of opportunity to display their fantastic

watercolors, intricate woodwork pieces, earthy works of pottery, creative multimedia, godly

stainedglass, distinctive oil paintings, beautiful quilts, thoughtful social documentary

photographs, hearty ironwork, and ethereal glassblowing. The experience is a one of a kind

opportunity to get straight to the heart of what art really is: “When you buy an original piece of

art, you’re not just buying art. You’re buying the artist too. And Art makes your life better – it

really does. It’s not just a cliché,” (Bossard, 2008).

If this isn’t intimate enough, the theater community steps it up a notch and brings

performances straight into the audience’s local living rooms. Bossard (2008) told of local

playwright who two years ago, got together a local group of actors and developed an original play

that was solely to be performed in people’s living rooms. “So they traveled it around. Friends and

friends of friends would offer up their homes and they would do the shows in the house. It was

designed to be done in a small place, so they would invite friends over, and friends of friends, and

they just connected using social networks,” (Bossard, 2008). The result was a modern version of

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the old French salon performances in which men and woman would gather to participate in

formal and informal drawing room entertainment.

Part of the reason that this is successful is that Ithaca is able to see arts as integral to life,

and not just a high culture. “One thing that Ithaca and the Ithaca arts community seems to

understand in a way that some communities don’t is that art doesn’t need to be a separate

category. Everything that we do can be expressed more fully by using art. Everything doesn’t

necessarily have to be just what you’d typically think. It can be presented in an artistic

way,” (Bossard, 2008). For instance, Ithaca had a Puppetry Pageant for Peace to demonstrate the

constitutionally established right for freedom of assembly. The local green community developed

ties with the arts community to create a sustainable art program that has recently put a show on at

the public library where the sculptures and artwork was entirely made through the creative reuse

of salvaged materials (Bossard, 2008).

This type of exhaustive participation in the arts on the parts of the community shows its

waywardness when it comes to what I call the ‘cookie cutter arts.’ As popular culture makes

recorded, boxed, processed and replications of art more readily available, the originals works are

now forced to confront pop and corporate culture directly as competitors. Ithaca veers away from

this trend.

Any example of this deference is the fact that Ithaca does not house any mainstream

nightclub that routinely emphasizes disc jockeys. According to Bossard, “Nightlife is the arts in

Ithaca. Whether its live music or performance. It’s not for lack of trying [that there is not a

nightclub] – there have been attempts to put nightclubtype venues in Ithaca and that didn’t work.

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There’s something about the community that rejects that for some reason,” (Bossard, 2008). Real,

present and genuine artists are preferred over the packaged arts and local and eclectic versions are

always dominant over the pop versions.

GREEN LIVING

Ithaca possesses a particular drive to learn, understand, and develop sustainable practices

that improve the environment and the local community. This lifestyle has been adopted

nationwide as a part of the Green Revolution, but has a particular vibrancy and vitality in the

Ithaca community.

As Jacquelyn Ottman (1998) notes, the major push that is coming from this ecofriendly

consciousness that propels the Green Revolution is the fact that “individuals are acting upon their

values through the power of their purchasing decisions,” (Ottman, 1998, p.8). These decisions are

revolutionizing the way people interact with the products, services and world around them and

evoke a newfound consciousness about personal accountability.

It is often assumed that much of this ecoconsciousness is the result of altruistic notions.

The motivations are multiple and varied. As Ottman (1998) notes, “refills save money, pollution

controls protect property, natural cottons say ‘I’m fashionable,’” (Ottman, 1998, p.128). But all of

these benefits that consumers face help them face a worlds that they are increasingly seeing as

risky. B y buying natural cleaning products and organic, pesticidefree foods, green consumers

are attempting to have an effect on their surroundings and in the process are shaping a new trend

known as environmental consumerism (Ottman, 1998).

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The Green Revolution began in the 1970s when environmental concerns, energy crises,

and water and air pollution issues rose to the surface. Legislative initiatives were enacted to

correct the problem, reducing the concern through the 1980s. However, the numerous

environmental disasters and events in the late 1980s, in conjunction with rising concerns about

global warming and the high cost of fuel have again propelled environmentalism to the spotlight

(Ottman, 1998).

Started by the Baby Boomer generation, it is not surprising that it is again the Boomer

population that is reincarnating environmentalism. This time, however, the Boomers have reached

maturity and are motivated by their desire to preserve the quality of life and the natural

environment for their children. By bringing their social values with them into adulthood, the

Boomers are able to use their sheer numbers, numbering 77 million, to usher a permanent shift

towards ecofriendly products and companies (Ottman, 1998).

But it is not just their sheer numbers that give them such enormous buying power. The

Boomers born between 1956 and 1964 have always made their ark on society at every point of

their journey to maturity. The social upheaval and antiwar movement, the music of the 1960s

and 1970s, and their current tastes in fashion, fitness and retirement have always shown how the

Boomers have great power in shaping pop culture. Environmentalism is merely their latest

indelible mark on society and they are wielding all of their sophisticated, educated, and upscale

prowess to change the marketplace (Ottman, 1998).

In fact, environmentalism is a direct result of the heady and education complexity that

characterizes the Baby Boomer generation. They are the most educated generation yet and have

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been privileged to more information than any previous generation. Furthermore, they know how

to use their knowledge collectively to get what they want. Ottman states that, “They consider

themselves logical and rational, and are attracted to high quality and substance; they shun glitter

and glitz,” (Ottman, 1998, p.20). The result is a holistic wellness philosophy that emphasizes the

overall quality of life – of humans and the environment that they live in.

This holistic approach has seen many rebirths. “A big difference between today’s

environmentally aware consumers and their 1970s counterparts is that the latter focused on hard

line, low consumption approaches to environmentalism while the former favors technology

driven solutions that allow them to maintain their lifestyles. The clarion call has changed from

‘no development’ to ‘sustainable development,’” (Ottman, 1998, p.41). Furthermore, the boomer

kids are now getting involved, and their enthusiasm may indeed exceed that of their parents. “As

yuppie families began to have children, their food choices were informed by all the same

influences that had been swirling around the baby boom generation,” (Winne, 2008, p.127). This

change has had a tremendous impact on Ithaca’s development and evolution into a green

community.

The ability to provide a choice in the level of involvement is the essence of Ithaca’s

greenness; whether that means simply remembering to put out recyclables on collection day or

living in Ithaca’s EcoVillage, a set of two 30home cohousing neighborhoods that are a part of a

global sustainable human culture initiative that grows and sells organic vegetables and berries. In

fact, it is important to remember that green consumers may not be activists but anyone who

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actively seeks out products, services, or actions that are perceived as having a minimal effect on

the environment.

Ottman (1998) defines five levels of green participation and involvement. The most

active group is the TrueBlue Greens who hold strong proenvironmental beliefs and live them

out in their quotidian life. According to Ottman, they are “almost three times more likely than

other consumers to avoid buying products from a company with a questionable environmental

reputation, and twice as likely to buy greener types of products… They believe they can

personally make a difference in solving environmental problems,” (Ottman, 1998, p.3031) – and

they do.

Typically older, wealthy, married with children, the TrueBlue Greens are predominantly

women. The fact that these women are at the forefront of these green decisions is incredibly

important and cannot be underestimated. As the primary shoppers they are influential in all

purchasing decisions for the rest of society and the next generation. They are the most desirable

consumer target – mainstream, educated and affluent (Ottman, 1998).

The second group of green consumers are the people who support environmentalism

through money instead of time or action: the Greenback Greens. Willing to spend up to 15%

more for green products, the Greenback Greens are unwilling to sacrifice their lifestyle. Ottman

states that, “They feel too busy to change their lifestyles but they are happy and able to express

their beliefs with their pocketbooks and wallets,” (Ottman, 1998, p.3132).

The Sprouts consist of roughly a third of the U.S public. They want the pro

environmental legislation but feel that they are unable to personally make a positive

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environmental impact through their purchases. They regularly engage in proenvironmental

activities such as recycling, bottle return, energy conservation and pollution avoidance, but they

are unwilling or unable to pay the much higher prices for the green products. The Sprouts are the

true reflection of middle America and represent the United State’s national norms in terms of sex,

age, and urban/rural splits, but often lean towards the more welleducated or affluent sectors

(Ottman, 1998).

Grousers represent a force that is 17 million strong in the United States. They take few

environmental actions. But at the same time, the Grousers do not believe that other people are

doing their part in the environmental struggle either. Often reliant on the government to fix

environmental products, they refuse to spend more money on green products that they perceive as

being less effective than their nongreen counterparts. Below average in terns of education and

income, they are confused, illinformed and unable to act (Ottman, 1998).

Lastly are the Basic Browns, the largest group of consumers in the United States. With 64

million people (35% of the American public) they are by far the least involved in environmental

issues. They are half as likely to recycle bottles and cans and do not participate in any

conservation activities. Disproportionately male and Southern, the Basic Brown attitude is

generally a reflection of the bluecollar and economically downscale lifestyle and it’s values –

there just is not that much that one can do to make a difference or a change (Ottman, 1998, p.

127).

As Bill Huttunen of Finger Lakes Farms wrote of the Ithaca area, “‘Live green’ is the

mantra,” (Huttunen, 2008, p.6B).Ithaca is has a high level of environmentally conscious residents.

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With a large concentration of TrueBlue Greens that are striving to bring Ithaca far beyond its

current position in the quest for green consumerism and environmental protection, the policies

and programs are far exceeding the expected economic limitations of such a small provincial city.

The rest of the population of the county, though perhaps not at the level of the TrueBlue Greens,

is dominated by Sprouts – they take actions and are knowledgeable about green purchasing

options but are slightly offput by the high prices that often correspond to the greener products.

With a limited Grouser and Basic Brown population in the area, the level of consciousness is

highly evolved and coherent.

However, at the same time there is a relatively small number of the Greenback Greens as

well. Part of this is Ithaca’s avoidance of the general corporate consumerism that accompanies the

lifestyle of the fast, busy, businessmen and businesswomen that make up the population. The

other part is that Ithaca itself is an activist community that believes in functional and operational

change in a direct and tangible way. This commitment that goes beyond the consumption of green

products has been one of the ways that Ithaca has avoided the overall trend of superficial green

washing in which corporations try to make their products appear more green than they may

actually be in order to boost their image of corporate social responsibility. A very appealing

choice for the Greenback Greens, the TrueBlue Greens see past the ploy. It is important that

“consumer’s concerns cannot be exploited through superficial product improvements and/or

communications,” (Ottman, 1998, p.58) – it isn’t enough to talk green in Ithaca, companies and

initiatives need to actually be green.

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Ithaca benefits from all levels of commitment by offering a multitude of choices for the

green consumer. Ithaca is a diverse community with a platform of opportunities for green

awareness. Kat McCarthy, recycling specialist at Tompkins County Solid Waste, “The Ithaca area

offers many unique opportunities to live and enjoy the green culture,” (McCarthy, 2008). The

availability of involvement levels in incredibly high in Tompkins County with sophisticated and

high involvement recycling programs, community supported agriculture initiatives, university and

research outreach, green purchasing opportunities, programs that reuse building and household

good within the local market, sustainable art initiatives and initial green purchasing education and

outlets. The options allow all green consumers to participate at their own level of involvement

beyond what they can simply do in their homes: replacing old light bulbs with efficient Energy

Star compact fluorescent bulbs, installing programmable thermostats, and taking shorter showers.

The county government is at the forefront of the green initiatives. Tompkins County

Solid Waste Department evolved out of the old landfill system when the landfill closed in 1990

due to environmental problems. According to Barbara Eckstrom (2008), the first and only county

solid waste manager since that point, the county developed a 20year comprehensive plan that

moved the solid waste practices away from disposal toward programs that emphasize recycling,

reuse, composting and education about waste reduction alternatives.

According to Eckstrom, this plan has flourished since its inception and is considered one

of the most victorious achievements in the local green community.

“After 18 years, our community has successfully reduced the amount of garbage thrown

away by almost 60%. Tompkins County now has one of the highest recycling rates in

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New York State and the country. This is due to the early policy decisions by the

Tompkins County Legislature to build the Recycling Center and implement a countywide

recycling collection program that out competes those in metropolitan, urban areas with a

history highly developed disposal infrastructure. Our provincial area rivals the most

successful urban operations,” (Eckstrom, 2008).

Many of these strides were made in the development of a secure funding system, including the

disposal fee where residents pay for each bag of trash that is picked up by garbage haulers and

brought to the disposal site. The secure funding from the county for these programs has insured

the development of alternative programs ranging from the local reuse center and a highly

developed system of partnerships with local green nonprofits and businesses (Eckstrom, 2008).

The latest of the Tompkins County Solid Waste Department initiatives is their green

purchasing program, otherwise known as rebuying, in which they are encouraging the

purchasing of new products that incorporate reused and recycled materials into their production.

This rebuy initiative has worked to develop a website, Finger Lakes Buy Green, where people

can search for recycled and safe products and get local information about where they can buy

these products. These products range from the best ecofriendly, recycled cleaning products, yard

maintenance, and garden materials to office supplies (McCarthy, 2008).

In conjunction with the rebuy program is the green purchasing consortium that has

formed in the last year. The consortium includes Tompkins County government, Cornell

University, Ithaca College, the City of Ithaca, the Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce,

Tompkins Seneca Tioga BOCES, and Tompkins Cortland Community College. The group shares

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resources and works to increase the purchasing power and bring down the prices of green

products by buying in large quantities and sharing (McCarthy, 2008). After all, currently the

products are can be really expensive compared to new, or virgin, products..

On the community level there are a number of programs that help push the local residents

and businesses towards environmentally holistic solutions. Sustainable Tompkins is the umbrella

group that is supporting the local green initiatives through forums and websites. The members of

Sustainable Tompkins are those are involved in the green sector in Ithaca and work to motivate

others to become ecofriendly. Examples of their initiatives include the sustainable happy hour

that Kat McCarthy developed to, as she said, “Provide an informal face to face networking

opportunity for people in Ithaca to talk about sustainability initiatives,” (McCarthy, 2008).

Another aspect of Sustainable Tompkins is the Think Do Tank, a guerilla style grassroots

organization that develops and communicates ideas that can push the Tompkins County

community to the next level in community betterment (McCarthy, 2008).

Cayuga Compost is another local initiative that is working to provide food waste

collection and composting services to restaurants and schools, as well as any other business that

may have food waste that needs to be disposed and handled. The processing cost is shared by the

businesses and the county through Tompkins County Solid Waste subsidies, enabling businesses

an easy and inexpensive disposal outlet. The company is then able to compost the food

byproducts selling the finished product to local landscapers and vineyards for their use.

Another green community based organization is the Ithaca Car Share. The program

works in a similar manner to national companies such as Zipcar or Flexcar – companies that do

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not come to a provincial city as small as Ithaca, despite the large number of students that live

there. The program enables people to share cars among groups of neighbors so that everyone does

not need to own their own car (McCarthy, 2008). In effect, it encourages reduced gas

consumption, but also enables local pockets of interested people to use more expensive, eco

friendly cars, such as hybrids when they would not be able to afford one of their own.

Ithaca also has its own alternative to the typical car purchase: Ithaca Biodiesel. An

employee owned a democratically run cooperative corporation, Ithaca Biodiesel works to provide

high quality vegetable based fuels. They work to convert cars to biofuels and also sell biofuels

to the public. The biodiesels that they sell are made through a chemical reaction known as

transesterification that changes the viscosity of vegetable oil, making it more similar to petroleum

diesel. Biodiesel burns cleaner (making it environmentally friendly), is made from recycled waste

from local restaurants (making it sustainable). They also offer a series of presentations in which

Meghan Murphy, editor of Biodiesel American, and Mark Wienand, owner of Liquid Solar, a

dieselstraight vegetable oil conversion company, present to all types of groups, elementary to

adult (Ithaca Biodiesel, 2008).

Reuse is also a noteworthy part of the Ithaca green circle. Significant Elements is a non

profit architectural salvage warehouse run by Historic Ithaca that reuses building materials by

salvaging architectural items. Their website shows that they resell almost everything: reclaimed

solid wood doors, lighting, windows, clawfoot tubs, furniture, bath & kitchen sinks, wood

moldings, flooring, wainscoting, columns, slate & ceramic tile, toilets, shutters, cabinetry, ornate

hardware, and various other salvaged odds and ends. Working in partnership with the Tompkins

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County Solid Waste Department they are able to “reuse the past to build your future,” (Historic

Ithaca and Significant Elements, 2008).

The sheer number of unique, locally created and community focused programs and

initiatives in the Tompkins County area is a testament to the TrueBlue Greens. The actions that

this highly motivated sector of the population are taking bodes well fore the future

conservationism in Ithaca. As Ottman points out,

“A close look at the most active segment, the True Blues, demonstrates the relative depth

of their commitment. Given their societal influence, this suggests the types of behavior

that can be expected from a much bigger group of consumers in the future… As social

and style leaders, their forceful presence can be expected to exert increasing peer

pressure, particularly on the Greenback Greens and the Sprouts,” (Ottman, 1998, p.33).

The future looks good for green in Ithaca, especially since many of the programs in Ithaca do

exactly what Ottman recommends: motivates TrueBlue Greens by demonstrating how to make

contributions and rewarding their initiative, leadership and commitment; showing Greenback

Greens that environmental benefits are consistent with their busy lifestyles and add value to

products; encouraging Sprouts by using appeal to peer pressure, status, and simply showing that

going green is doing the right thing for the environment on a moral level; providing Grousers

with easy and costeffective ways to make contributions; and educating Basic Browns on how

individuals can make a difference by illustrating that a multiplicity of small actions add up to big

changes (Ottman, 1998).

FOOD IDENTITY

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Food constitutes a core component of any culture and it is key to defining a location and

people’s experience with it. The food industry is the fourth most important factor to the

satisfaction that people have when in a location and the fourth most identified attribute to

affecting the place’s attractiveness – after climate, accommodations and scenery (Hashimoto and

Telfer, 2003). Whether it is the food that you bought at the store to cook at home; the food

prepared at a local restaurant; food in the background of a tourism experience as the meal

advertised in a resort brochure; food in the foreground of daily entertainment, such as the special

interest cuisines, wine tourism, cooking schools and renowned chefs and restaurants no matter

what kind of role food plays, food is important (Hall, 2003). And in Ithaca local, organic, farmer

grown food is central.

Food is more than just eating – food represents identity, culture, production and

consumption trends and, increasingly, issues of sustainability,” (Hashimoto and Telfer, 2003).

For any location, food can become an icon (Hashimoto and Telfer, 2003), and it is an icon that

enables people to literally consume the destination (Weaver and Lawton, 2006). Atsuko

Hashimoto and David J. Telfer (2003) explains, “By eating local food, by sharing it with local

inhabitants, by adapting to different eating manners, the tourist [and I add that even the local] is

not only a spectator but he/she also becomes an actor of that culture and can achieve greater

communication with local inhabitants than he would otherwise,” (Hashimoto and Telfer, 2003, p.

82). The result is that food can be a common cultural unifying trait for those already participating

in the culture, but can also be an easily accessible channel for others to join and immerse

themselves in that culture.

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While food is primarily important to the local inhabitants, food tourism is an incredibly

important part of creating sustainability and cultural sharing for communities. Hashimoto and

Telfer (2003) illustrate that food encompasses every possible color of the tourism motivational

palette:

“to achieve relaxation (relaxing in a restaurant or at the terrace of a café), excitement

(trying new food, new ways of eating), escapism (changing from the usual food/everyday

life), status (trying some expensive or different food) , education (increasing one’s

knowledge about different types of food and wine and how to cook them), lifestyle (the

simple fact to be outside in nice weather and enjoying nice wine and food),” (Hashimoto

and Telfer, 2003, p.82).

Because of the attractiveness and value that food offers to tourists, there is an irreplaceable value

in its ability to communicate a location’s attributes to others. This tourist value is also amplified

by the local benefits that food offers to the development and sustainability of a location and its

own population. Food directly and indirectly contributes to the stimulation and support of

agricultural activity and food production, discourages authentic exploitation, enhances destination

attractiveness, the development of pride and community empowerment and a reinforcement of the

destination’s brand identity (du Rand, Heath and Alberts, 2003, p.100).

Ithaca is a city of progressive campaigners and their food is a direct reflection of their

activism – and their organic and healthy eating cuisine has been noticed nationwide. VegNews

magazine ranked Ithaca among their “12 Hippest Hometowns for Vegetarians” in 2006. Ithaca

was the “best health city in the Northeast” in 2003 according to Organic Style Magazine. And the

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Ithaca Farmers’ Market was named one of the “60 Best American Public Places” by the Utne

Reader in 2002. Ithaca’s food mentality has been well represented by these notices – Ithaca has a

strong agricultural community with an emphasis on local, farmeroriented production and sale of

healthy and organic products. And the best place to see this in action is the local farmers’ market.

Farmers’ markets started to appear across America in the mid1970s in an effort to

rediscover farmers, as well as the taste, price, and value of locally produced foods. According to

Mark Winne (2008), “The idea was simple: connect local farmers and urban consumers,

especially lowerincome families, for both groups’ mutual benefit. This could be done by

developing highreturn retail outlets for small and mediumsize farmers, while providing more

highquality outlets for producestarved urban consumers,” (Winne, 2008, p.38). The result is

obviously beneficial for both parties – the farmers make more money selling at farmers’ markets

than acting as pricetakers in the wholesale system and those who are unable to grow their own

food are able to get provisions that they know are fresh, healthy, and have a short travel time from

soil to table. Thirty years later, there are more than 4,000 farmers’ markets of varying sizes with a

USDA estimate of between 30,000 and 50,000 farmer participants (Winne, 2008).

The success or failure of a particular market is heavily predicated by the quality of the

location and its nearness to the people that it serves – both farmers and customers. If it works for

the farmers they will come to sell. If people are given a large selection of farmers and different

types of produce they will come to buy on a regular basis. “Ultimately, if the farmers made

money, they would come. No money, no farmers. No farmers, no market,” (Winne, 2008, p.41).

What has made Ithaca’s market so successful is that it is located directly off the main traffic

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artery through the City of Ithaca, Route 13. Located in a permanent home on the waterfront of

Cayuga Lake, the large covered pavilion snakes along the border of the inlet shaded by the robust

willows along the water’s edge.

With a picnic area, docking area and extensive parking, the area has become a public

haunt where people can congregate, mingle, and interact. The result is the epitome of a successful

location, one that “people find profoundly soothing, even grounding in contrast to the hurlyburly

atmosphere of gargantuan shopping malls and the inhuman scale of bigbox stores,” (Winne,

2008, p.46).

As Jean McPheeters of the Chamber of Commerce aptly notes: “the Ithaca Farmers’

Market gives you a sense of how people actually live here,” (McPheeters, 2008). The outdoor

market is a wellknown landmark in the community and has recently been implemented a ‘zero

waste’ policy that recruits volunteers to ensure that all food waste is composted and all the plates,

cups, and utensils are made from compostable sugar or corn products (McCarthy, 2008). The

market features over 150 vendors that sell everything local: the fresh and locally grown produce

and plants, as well as the locally made specialty baked goods, meats, cheeses, wines, condiments,

and readytoeat cuisine. The market also sells an assortment of handicrafts, art, clothing,

furniture and miscellaneous items. All of the market items are made and grown within a 30mile

radius of Ithaca (Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, 2008).

Yet the Ithaca Farmers Market is not the only outlet for Ithacaarea farmers. In Tompkins

County there are four farmers’ markets: the Groton Farmers’ Market, Trumansburg Farmers’

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Market, Danby Farmers’ Market and the main market in Ithaca. There are also nine farm markets

that sell local produce in a grocery setting and work as a local liaison.

There are roughly 550 full and parttime farmers in Tompkins County. Together they

own over onethird of the countryside and rent even more as a part of their operations. Their

products are vast and varied. Everything from the assortment of fruit, vegetables and flowers to

the beef, pork, lamb, and goat to the cheese, maple syrup and honey is produced, raised and

processed in a sustainable and productive manner. A wide variety of the output of these farmers is

also organic. In unison, the local farmers contribute over $18 million to the local economy

(Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, 2008).

Cornell University, as a landgrant college, has played an influential role in supporting

the local farmers and the agricultural economy. Cornell has a real emphasis on agriculture and

green manufacturing and has put many resources in the research and development of innovations

that boost the agricultural sustainability. Cornell has developed everything from new breeds of

grapes, winter wheat and strawberries to less intrusive or more beneficial methods of crop

productivity. The animal genetics findings have been revolutionary in stopping the spread of

disease to improving embryo survival (Cornell University, 2008a).

In addition to these research initiatives and discoveries, Cornell also offers tangible

support to the local agricultural community through Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE). CCE

works in cooperation with many of the businesses, agencies, and organizations in the area to

develop and support the local agricultural economy and enable people to improve their own lives

and community through partnerships that put experience and knowledge to work. Their work is

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based on 10 different initiatives: house and home, community, yard and garden, farm and

agribusiness, food, finances, youth, family, environment and volunteering. By hosting workshops

and seminars for farmers and rural landowners, CCE works to help improve the current

operations and help to develop and expand the opportunity for new enterprises in the future. They

are also working to boost farm profitability by helping farms look for innovative, practical ways

to sell products, particularly direct marketing to customers. Assistance is offered to new and

veteran farmers to help with business planning and marketing, grant writing, linking to new

customers, and agrotourism. They also coordinate educational events for the nonfarming public

in order to encourage extended knowledge of farming, agriculture, and horticulture so that it may

be more accessible and supported by the surrounding community (Tompkins County Chamber of

Commerce, 2008).

A very strong component of the CCE program is their spearheading of the “Buy Local”

campaign to sustain local agriculture and build a stronger local food system in Tompkins and

surrounding counties. The efforts of the campaign work to foster the environmental, economic

and social vitality of the community by increasing the connections between consumers and

farmers through outreach, marketing, and special initiatives to raise individual and institutional

awareness (Cornell, 2008b).

Many of these local farms are active participants in the local community supported

agriculture (CSA) system. CSAs are a relatively new system of farming, appearing in the United

States in the late 1980s, that has literally brought the community back into the world of organic

farming. Typically CSAs are associated with the development of organic or sustainable

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agriculture because most members are profoundly interested in the ability of farmers to maintain

their quality of their agricultural land and resources and provide healthy, superior produce. Most

CSAs are certified organic or have guaranteed their members that they will only use organic

methods (Winne, 2008).

In brief, CSAs work so that people buy into a farmer’s harvest well in advance of the first

harvest. The money is given to the farmer up front, guaranteeing the member a subscription or

share of the season’s projected harvest throughout the harvest season. The advantage of this

approach is that the farmers are paid up front, ensuring that they will have the capital that is

required for a successful harvest. Further, the customers literally share in the risks of farming –

the bad weather, pests, low market prices and other issues that arise as a natural result of farming.

However, it is not only the farmer the profits, the customers are also privy to receive ample

awards for their investment during good years because their share of the profits will result in

more produce (Winne, 2008; McCarthy, 2008).

Another benefit for the consumers is that their involvement greatly expands their

awareness of how food is produced, a set of knowledge that is quickly declining throughout most

of the modern world. Winne energetically illustrates this decline in rustic knowledge:

“Being hardy and selfreliant people we think we are, we harbor the belief that when all

else fails, we can always return to the soil for our sustenance. Should the oil run out, the

trucks and trains stop running, the farflung network crumble into dust, the land and our

instinctive ability to coax food from it will save us. At least this is the folklore we fall

back on, a wisdom passed from our pioneering ancestors, whose skill, knowledge, and

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work ethic we would have to channel in order to truly live off the land. Having witnessed

many sincere but ultimately failed attempts to transform dirt, water, and see into food, I

tend to look somewhat askance at those who suggest that more of us, if not all of us, and

especially the poor, should ‘grow their own,’” (Winne, 2008, p.55).

The notion of CSAs brings the producer and consumer closer together, making it clear that the

food and farm are associated with a particular place and not just the amorphous global food

system and its series of nameless, faceless and placeless people and places.

It is estimated that more than 2,000 CSAs operate across the United States and Canada.

Especially when in connection to the growth of farmers’ markets, these CSAs elevate the primacy

of food and reemphasize the fact that local food is undeniably appealing. But it is more than that,

CSAs and farmers’ markets are an irrefutable lifestyle choice.

“Food, of course, tells many tales about people – their cultures, traditions, lifestyle

preferences, homelands, and personal health, to name a few. Like the clothes we wear

and the cars we drive, food is an expression of who we are and what we value. For the

Volvoowning CSA members […] their food, like their cars, is a deliberate and well

considered choice. They belong to a CSA because they believe it will enhance the health

and safety of their families, protect the environment, and support local

agriculture,” (Winne, 2008, p.140).

The CSAs and farmers’ markets become a primary identifier and the membership and

participation is an illustration of the local emphasis – farmers, organic, immersion, and pride.

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However, farming interaction does not simply rely on farmer harvested products. In

addition to these marketplaces there are nine additional upick farms where you can pick

strawberries, apples, raspberries, peaches, pears, melons, pumpkins, tomatoes, asparagus and

other assorted vegetables on your own. There are also two local agritourism farms: the Indian

Chimney Alpaca Farm that is home to a number of alpacas and other animals and The Turtle

Village Project that features organic gardens and small farm animals.

These interactive farms enable people to come into contact with farms and have tangible

experiences that create sensual memories. Ann Elizabeth Sharples (2003) notes that there is

nothing as strong as a consumers primary interaction and farms such as these are “making the

point by allowing visitors to walk through their orchards and ‘touch’ the apples in order to

promote the closeness between raw materials on the trees and the finished product on the

shelves,” (Sharples, 2003, p.51).

Yet, in Ithaca, food goes far beyond the farms and mingles with the urban culture. Ithaca

is home to more restaurants per capita than New York City (Ithaca/Tompkins County Convention

and Visitors Bureau, 2008b). Six of these restaurants are classified as natural, vegetarian or

organic cuisine. This includes the Moosewood Restaurant, the natural and healthful food cuisine

that has produced 11 internationally acclaimed cookbooks (Ithaca/Tompkins County Convention

and Visitors Bureau, 2008a). But the variety extends far beyond that and illustrates yet again

Ithaca’s love of choices.

As Judith Pratt and Peggy Haine explain, “Ithaca’s international population and

adventurous tastes mean that you can sample Thai curry, Japanese sake, or Spanish tapas, as well

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as locally made bagels, ice cream and beer,” (Pratt and Haine, 2008). The official tourism guide

has restaurant classifications that far exceed the typical American, Mexican and Chinese Fare.

There is Korean, Japanese, Caribbean, Thai, Creole, Cajun, Vietnamese, and Greek. The result is

162 restaurants offering anything that your heart desires.

The sights, smells and feel of these farms produce an evocative image of the scene and

showcases the area’s countryside and farmers. The variety of restaurants represents the well

embraced diversity of the community. The end result is that the regional imagery contributes to

differentiating the local rural economy from the homogeneity of standardized products that are

available elsewhere. This in turn reaffirms the local brand and adds the important contributing

facet of niche food product marketing.

WINE

Of all niche food products, Ithaca holds a powerful attractor in its local winery boom.

Wine is a particularly wellarticulated form of food attractions that brings to the table not only a

strong product, but also the scenic winescapes and beautiful agricultural enrichment. Wineries are

also a powerful force in attracting tourists who both benefit the cellardoor operations in exurban

locations but also the local infrastructure and peripheral activities.

Wine tourism is literally any visitation to vineyards, wineries, wine festivals or wine

shows in which the primary motivation is to experience and taste grape wines. The tourism form

is heavily linked to the land, transforming the local landscape into a particular amalgamation of

agriculture, industry and tourism (Hashimoto and Telfer, 2003). From a communications

perspective, wine tourism is a strong boost to any provincial city and the surrounding area

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because it reinforces the regions current market position, one built on the images of the idyll

landscapes and natural beauty. It also diversifies the portfolio of cultural and agricultural tourism

products – products that are clearly tied back to the location and the region’s positioning in the

brand marketplace (Williams and Dossa, 2003).

The history of wine in the Finger Lakes goes back to the topography’s formation. The

receding glaciers gave upstate New York a unique combination of geography and climate with

the numerous bodies of water acting as natural air conditioning, cooling in the summer and

warming in the winter. The effect is that the vines are sheltered from both temperature extremes.

Until the 1930 the only grapes grown in the area were indigenous American varieties, technically

known as vitis labrusca. At that point, FrenchAmerican varieties were developed to combine the

best of both worlds – the flavor of the European varieties and the hardiness of the American

vines. In 1951, an immigrant from Europe, Dr. Konstantin Frank earned his PhD from Cornell

University and bucked the conventional wisdom that the delicate European vitis vinifera could

not be grown in the Finger Lakes (New York Wine and Grape Foundation, 2008). This sparked

what has come to be known as the “Vinifera Revolution,” a movement that has motivated New

York wineries to produce wines of equal caliber to the Europeans, and illustrating that “a long

history in wine making is not needed to produce competitive wine products,” (Williams and

Dossa, 2003, p.2).

At this point, New York is home to the thirdlargest wineproducing region in America.

Compared to Europe’s wine regions, the wine county in New York is huge, spanning more

than500 miles from eastern Long Island to the state’s western border with Pennsylvania. All

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together, the region is the number two grape juice producer in America and the state with the

third most total grape acreage. The annual harvest produces 160,000 tons of grapes with 30% of

them going to wards wine making and the remaining 70% of them going toward grape juice

production. There are 32,000 acres of vineyards and 240 wineries. More than 220 of these

wineries were established since 1976 and all together they have produced more than 200 million

bottles of wine (New York Wine and Grape Foundation, 2008).

The wineries around Cayuga Lake were the first to organize themselves into an structured

Wine Trail in the early 1980s. Now the longest running wine trail in New York State, the Cayuga

Wine Trail has worked to fulfill its dream: “working together to bring more visitors to their doors

to takes the fruits of their labors,” (Cayuga Wine Trail, Inc., 2008, cover). As of 2008, 15

wineries, one cidery, one meadery and four distilleries are a part of the trail. Together that have

won 4,906 national and international medals and awards, including four of the Governor’s Cups,

“known as the Oscars of New York Wines,” (Cayuga Wine Trail, Inc., 2008, cover).

It is a wellknown fact that Ithaca acts as the hub for the area’s wineries – both those on

Cayuga lake as well as 36 wineries on neighboring Seneca Lake (Seneca Lake Winery

Association, Inc., 2008). It doesn’t matter that Tompkins County only has one winery in its

borders, Six Mile Creek Vineyard, because Ithaca offers what the surrounding area cannot offer

to wine tourists: housing, restaurants, entertainment, arts and nightlife. “We have a tremendous

number of people who come here and stay here in order to visit the wineries. As an entry point to

the winery area, Ithaca is an excellent entry point. We have better hotels, we have the restaurants,

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we have an immense amount of dining facilities – excellent not chain restaurants, really good

quality. So people can build packages around those sort of things,” (McPheeters, 2008).

COLLEGES AND EDUCATION

It is hard to separate Ithaca and education. With two major universities and a well

established and revolutionary community college, it is understandable why “Ithaca and higher

education have been synonymous for nearly 150 years” (Ithaca/Tompkins County Convention

and Visitors Bureau, 2008b). This history is one that has a direct impact on the look, feel and

brand that Ithaca possesses. Despite the modern and eccentric feel that Ithaca emits, the “Ivy

covered halls of Cornell gives it an old feel. Even though Ithaca has a new feel as a city, there’s

that idea of tradition with the colleges that makes it feel a little bit like the old world,” (Bossard,

2008). It is an understatement to say that the Ithaca area values education. Highereducation has

a twofold presence in Ithaca: first is the huge number of highly educated individuals that live in

the area and secondly, there are a plethora of institutions.

College attainment is an indicator of the level of skill that an area’s population has and

the amount of talent and specialty that they bring to the table (Cortright, 2006). More than 48.8%

of local residents have a bachelor’s degree, excluding college students and others who are not

officially permanent residents of Tompkins County. Roughly 27.4% of the residents of Tompkins

County, age 25 and over, have earned a master’s, professional or doctorate degree. These figures

put Ithaca well over the national average (Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, 2008).

During the 2000 census, only 24% of Americans had a bachelor’s, professional or graduate

degree (Tompkins County Area Development, 2008). With so many welleducated residents, the

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supply of knowledgeable workers is of colossal proportions. Ithaca was ranked eight by

Kiplingers Personal Finance’s top 50 smartest places to live in 2006 (Stoff, 2008) and ranked

first in the 2006 Forbes ranking of areas with educational attainment (Pratt and Haine, 200&).

Expansion Management Magazine ranked Ithaca as the number one city for knowledge workers

in 2006 and the city continues to live up to this name (Pratt and Haine, 2007).

The sheer number of college graduates shows Ithaca’s true value – especially as societies

are transforming from economies based on financial and material capital to human capital. The

most indispensable asset in a knowledge economy is smart people (Cortright, 2006), and having a

holistic environment that can support the emotional, spiritual and intellectual needs of citizens

supports the growth of these people. These needs are nourished through the development and

support of imagination, an inner force that requires access to information, schools to develop and

generate intellectual capacity, and an arts and cultural scene to stimulate alternate thinking – all of

which are present in Ithaca. The result is the development of a reputation that attracts creativity

and therefore investment and talented individuals: “great minds naturally gravitate towards

environments that are vibrant and creative,” (Gilmore, 2003, p.170).

But it is not enough merely to rely on existing, aging human capital. “Communities that

grow and prosper manage to retain their talented young adults while attracting people from the

outside, such as young families, professionals, artists, business people and entrepreneurs, and

seniors,” (Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, 2008). It is important that talent is retained,

attracted and even developed in a homegrown way.

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As the numberone industry in the area and the largest employer education is literally

Ithaca’s passion, their past, and their future (Ithaca/Tompkins County Convention and Visitors

Bureau, 2008b). The result is that much of the area revolves around the three main colleges in

Tompkins County: Cornell University, Ithaca College and Tompkins Cortland Community

College.

Cornell University was founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White.

The youngest member of the Ivy League, the university is the only Ivy that has incorporated a

state landgrant institution into its university to create a unique mingling of private university

benefit with public college access. The result has also enabled a blending of the humanities and

the applied sciences. Composed of 13 different colleges and schools, Cornell has a 745acre

campus with 260 major buildings. It is one of the top 10 research institutions for nano and

microcommercialization research and facilities (Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce,

2008; Pratt and Haine, 2007).

Ithaca College was originally founded in 1892 as the Ithaca Conservatory of Music in the

downtown Dewitt Park. Since then, the college has moved onto Ithaca’s South Hill and expanded

to a university with five different schools with 100 programs and over 2,000 individual course

offerings. Ithaca still has a strong emphasis in music and the arts and upholds its intimate

conservatory feel by maintaining a student to instructor ration of 12 to 1 (Tompkins County

Chamber of Commerce, 2008; Bossard, 2008). The college, though predominantly a place for

undergraduate study has pushed itself forward on the graduate market and is now recognized as

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one of the premier graduate programs. In 2007, U.S. News ranked Ithaca College as having the

number seven top Northeast master’s level programs (Pratt and Haine, 2007).

The newest and most unique member of the higheducation family in Tompkins County

is the SUNY affiliate Tompkins Cortland Community College (TC3). A joint effort between

Tompkins and Cortland Counties, TC3 is not the typical community college because it strongly

emphasizes the transition from twoyear to fouryear academic programs. Many of the programs

at TC3 are strictly designed for students who are using the school as a launching pad into a four

year program at an accredited university or college rather than for simply finishing a twoyear

associate’s degree – and many of the students are not simply transferring to state schools. Jean

McPheeters notes that, “In terms of transfers into Cornell University, the largest single college

that transfers into Cornell University is TC3,” (McPheeters, 2008). The school has developed

intimate relationships and articulation agreements with the nearby Cornell and Ithaca College

primarily knowing that a lot of the local jobs require a bachelor’s degree.

The colleges, and particularly Cornell University, play a large role in everything in the

local community. Of all of the employment opportunities in Tompkins County, private education

sector represented 26% (12,500) of all jobs in 2005. As of 2006, Cornell was the number one

employer with 9,480 employees, and Ithaca College followed in second with 1,525 employees.

And if education wasn’t enough, the fourth largest employer is the Ithaca City School District

with 1,200 employees (Tompkins County Area Development, 2008).

Beyond employment the schools represent a huge proportion of the population, a student

population that has only grown in the past 30 years. With 30,298 students actively participating in

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highereducation opportunities at Cornell University, Ithaca College and Tompkins Cortland

Community College, the student population rivals the city’s 30,343 residents and the county’s

100,407.

A large number of the tourists that come to the area are also affiliated with the colleges.

The Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce has done numerous studies about what attracts

people to the area as visitors and the number one pull has always been the same: colleges. “They

come because they are brining kids to look at the colleges. They’re coming to see their kids.

They’re coming for graduation and et cetera, et cetera…” (McPheeters, 2008).

Stephen Kimball explained that it is different to have a University be the main business

of a town instead of a company: “It provides a lot more vitality – an influx of young people and

even older students that tend to mix things up,” (Kimball, 2008). Kimball is not alone in his

argument. Joseph Cortright rationalizes that the movement of the young and welleducated is

always a direct reflection of an area’s vitality. As the most mobile people in the nation and the

most likely population to move across state lines, the movement acts as an indicator of the trends

in workforce education and availability. Places with lots of these young and welleducated

individuals today are the places that are likely to have the vitality and invigorating resources of

tomorrow’s welleducated workers in the years ahead (Cortright, 2006, p.12).

The second aspect of having the main industry of a city be education is that there is a

huge infiltration of notfor profits. As McPheeters notes, “We have more notforprofits than

most places. First of all, our largest businesses are notforprofit: Cornell, Ithaca College, the

hospital. They are notfor profits. Those are our largest businesses,” (McPheeters, 2008). The

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entire are economy and way of life is set in motion by the notforprofit attitude, not the corporate

structure of many other successful local economies.

The stimulation that Ithaca receives from these students hits a large number of sectors

beyond the university because of the colleges’ ability to dilute the typical division that appears

between colleges and the local community, a division that is known as the ‘town and gown’

separation. Often this separation develops because there are lots of events and entertainment

opportunities already happening on campus enabling the college population to develop their own

community (Bossard, 2008). But Ithaca benefits from the colleges’ efforts to develop programs

that integrate their students into the Ithaca and Tompkins County community.

The programs at Ithaca College are well integrated into the community, ensuring Ithaca

truly lives up to its display at the local History Center: ‘Ithaca College is Ithaca’s College.’

Having started and grown out of downtown, the solid connection to the Commons area has

continued to remain despite the fact that Ithaca College now is situated on South Hill at the

southern end of town.

Ithaca College students particularly have an impact on the local arts community. They

provide employees, volunteers, audiences and inters for all of the local theatre companies in the

town and work to support the local Ticket Center. Cornell students also participate, but to a lesser

degree. One of the key ties that enables this interdependency is Ithaca College’s theater arts

management program. The program requires internships in the surrounding community,

providing the student with experience and insight and the local arts organizations with the

youthful energy and welltrained students (Bossard, 2008).

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Where Ithaca College interacts with the arts community, Cornell has ample interaction

with the local agriculture base and community development initiatives. The Cornell Cooperative

Extension (CCE) program actively recruits Cornell students as volunteers and interns. Their

‘Summer of Service’ work study program is structured as a threeway service and learning

partnership between the student, the community and CCE and affiliate nonprofit organizations.

In the program, the students do everything from helping to provide free lunches to impoverished

children to farmer outreach and workshop development (Cornell University, 2008b).

AN INTERNATIONAL PRESENCE

Another incredibly valuable aspect of colleges is the diversity of people that they bring to

the area, even if only for transient residence. Both Ithaca College and Cornell University bring a

huge range of students, professors and researchers to Ithaca with diverse international

backgrounds. These people share their experiences, culture, and lifestyles and add their

perspective to the amalgamation of options in Ithaca greatly contributing to the freethinking

persona that is so deeply valued.

As of 2007, Cornell’s student population consisted of 3,654 foreign students. These

students comprised 17.7% of the total student body. The only population of students that

exceeded foreign students in percentage were those from New York State, 30.7%. Foreign

students had a higher percentage than those from the Middle States, New England, the Midwest,

the West, the South and the Southwest (Cornell University, 2008c). At Ithaca College’s student

body is highly representative as well, with students from 68 countries, including the United

States, ranging from Albania to Zimbabwe (Ithaca College, 2007b). Added to this international

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student population is the 10.5 estimated percent of foreign born residents living in Tompkins

County in 2000 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008b).

In an increasingly global economy, the role that international talent plays is becoming

especially important, as is the ability for regions to attract the best workforce and ideas from

around the world. The knack that the United States has had for drawing in international aptitude

has historically played a key role in establishing technology leadership and economic growth.

“Places that can attract talented workers from other nations can grow economies more easily than

those that draw only from a domestic pool of talent. Moreover, the greater diversity of experience

of workers from outside the U.S. may help U.S. firms be more competitive,” (Cortright, 2006, p.

16).

As globalization is reaching new heights, the spread of culture is not merely just products

and ideas. People are scattering themselves across the planet easily, cheaply and quickly and

developing relationships and new ties to people around the world..“The importance of goods

movement is increasingly being surpassed by the connections among people, which are the

lifeblood of nearly all urban economies. We define these connections broadly, from the far

reaching global to the intensely local. Great cities are connected at all these levels,” (Cortright,

2006, p.28). Basically the essence of success in a global economy is the ability to tap into the

global marketplace by developing relationships.

These associations become communication channels for the flow of ideas and knowledge.

Joseph Cortright (2006) indicates that these channels are “functions of ‘local buzz and global

pipelines,” (Cortright, 2006, p.29) using the intimacy that can only be grown on the local level to

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transfer ideas, brands and identity on an international level. He continues that, “Areas have to

have their own strong localized interactions and knowledge and function well locally, but they

must also have easy and extensive connections to other places with ‘buzz’ around the

world,” (Cortright, 2006, p.29).

These international relationships can be as firmly developed as a foreignborn person

taking up residence in Ithaca and maintaining business and educational ties with their home

country, or as loose as a study abroad student spending one semester in Ithaca and returning home

with an ‘Ithaca is Gorges’ teeshirt.

Beyond foreigners coming to regions, locals also have the capability of creating bonds

through their own travel. Cortright notes that the extent to which locals travel is a clear indicator

of global connections. “Foreign travel, whether for business or pleasure, expands awareness of a

region’s residents to other places and cultures. These wider connections and experiences can

prove to be an economic advantage,” (Cortright, 2006, p.40). Proof of Ithacan’s travel can been

seen in the history of the local airport. Ithaca’s airport has had to undergo a number of

renovations and development projects since the first airport opened in Ithaca in 1948. In 1994 the

current 33,000 squarefoot terminal was built to keep up with the ever increasing number of

travelers and on April 10, 2008 the airport completed a new aviation hanger to cap off the decade

of growth and expansion. Travel continues to increase in the Ithaca area. In 2004 the airport

served roughly 140,000 passengers. In 2007 the Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport served over

170,000 passengers (Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport, 2008).

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Either way, the link is established and is a means for communicating the value of the

Ithaca community, its ideas, its people, its landscape and its businesses. This however does not

mean that these global connections are a more valuable component of location development than

local connections, nor do they substitute for what the local connections can do to increase morale,

spirit, and effectiveness. They do however improve the recognizability of a location and the

breadth of its presence.

INNOVATION

When push comes to shove the key to making a location marketable, attractive, vibrant

and worthy of praise are the local achievements in terms of creativity and innovation. Simon

Anholt (2007) notes that, “Creative is the opposite of boring: this is the factor which perhaps

more than any other ensures that the nation, region or city stands a chance of being noticed in an

increasingly noisy and crowded marketplace,” (Anholt, 2007, p.76). In effect, the ability for to

generate new ideas and translate them into a tangible reality and product is a critical source of

competitive advantage – something that is not just a mandate for businesses but regions as well.

Globalization is turning the world economy into one that is knowledgebased. To be

active on the international marketplace and avoid isolation and vulnerability, it is imperative that

regions embrace the skills and abilities of their residents and foster them to shape their economic

destiny (Cortright, 2007). The presence of these talents cannot be assumed. As Joseph Cortright

says:

“The ability to create new ideas everything from earthshaking breakthroughs in genetic

engineering and nanotechnology to better ways to deliver packages or sew a shirt – is

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what drives prosperity. And despite proclamations that the world is flat, the capability of

generating new ideas is not evenly distributed across space. Certain places, with strong

aggregations of talent, clusters of innovative firms, key research institutions and a

business and social climate conducive to change and risktaking, account for a

disproportionate share of these valuable new ideas,” (Cortright, 2006, p.1819).

And Tompkins County has all of this. The area is one of these blessed places thanks to the local

culture, the magnetism for creative artists, the presence of universities, the nonprofit base, the

international population, and the innovative people. Tompkins County has everything from

Cornell, one of the top 10 research institutions for nano and microcommercialization research

and facilities (Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, 2008; Pratt and Haine, 2007) and to the

credit of being the birthplace of the Ice Cream Sunday in 1882 (Bonn, 2008).

Many and most of these ideas cannot be measured directly: they are invisible and

weightless. However, their presence leaves distinct footprints on the cultural and economic

landscape which can be traced (Cortright, 2006).

One of the easies ways to measure level innovation in an area is to look at the intellectual

property rights associated with an area. With 661 patents originating from Tompkins County

between 1990 and 1999, the county far exceeds any of its neighbors: Tioga County (245),

Schuyler County (57), Cayuga County (106), Chemung County (395), Seneca County (91) and

Cortland County (83) (Office for Patent and Trademark Information, 2000). On a more current

level, in 2004 The Cornell Center for Technology, Enterprise and Commercialization received

225 inventions from Cornell faculty and staff alone, filed 88 applications for United States

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patents and 40 for overseas patents, licensed 87 patents for commercial use and helped start five

companies. At the end of the year, the center held rights to 594 domestic patents and 238 overseas

patents and was administering 497 active licenses (Cornell, 2008a). “Of course, not all good ideas

are patented, and many ideas that are patented turn out to be worthless, but patent activity is a

useful proxy for innovation,” (Cortright, 2006, p.20). The sheer number of ideas that Tompkins

County residents are protecting as intellectual property illustrates the groundbreaking

achievements that the area is capable of and has already accomplished.

Trumansburg, just minutes north of Ithaca, was where Bob Moog invented the Moog

Synthesizer in 1954, one of the first widely used electronic musical instruments that catapulted

the music industry forward in genres such as rap, blues, funk, jazz, rock and roll and hip hop, and

even motivated and changed the sounds of the infamous Beatles (Moog Music, 2008). In the early

days of moving pictures, Ithaca was home to a silent movie studio that enabled directors to take

advantage of the varied landscape of gorges, hills, waterfalls, and historic buildings that

captivated the eyes of early movie makers.

One of the significant innovations has been the way that the town has coped with revenue

leakage and promoted the local economy: the Ithaca HOUR, the first local currency that has

inspired similar systems worldwide (Pratt and Haine, 2007). In 1991, Paul Glover developed the

Ithaca HOUR as the first form of modern local currency, a system that promotes local economic

strength and community selfreliance. Worth roughly $10, one hour of work naturally earns one

Ithaca HOUR of payment. The first dispersal of Ithaca Hours was at the GreenStar Cooperative

Market. Since 1991, several million dollars value of Ithaca HOURS have been traded. By paying

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wages and selling goods and services in this local currency, Ithaca has been able to keep money

local, building the Ithaca economy and developing a strong sense of community pride and

interconnectivity. Currently over 900 participants publicly accept Ithaca HOURS for goods and

services and some local employers and employees have agreed to pay or receive partial wages in

Ithaca Hours. These businesses include: the public library, local movie theatres, restaurants,

healers, plumbers, electricians, landlords, the Alternatives Federal Credit Union (a local bank),

and the Cayuga Medical Center (the local hospital). Now run as a nonprofit, Ithaca Hours, Inc.

also makes interestfree loans of Ithaca HOURS to local businesses and grants to local nonprofits

in order to spur the investment in the local economy and develop economic sustainability (Ithaca

Hours, Inc., 2005).

Another innovative presence can be seen in the way that Ithaca develops local

organizations, reworking a typical business and developing it beyond previously held notions. For

example, the Tompkins County SPCA, originally founded in 1902, was turned into a ‘nokill’

shelter in 1999. The shelter realized its ‘nokill’ vision in 2002, saving 100% of healthy and

treatable animals and becoming the first county in the nation to achieve this level of efficiency

(Tompkins County SPCA, 2007; Pratt and Haine, 2007). The shelter went beyond the normal

capacities of animal shelters in 2004 with the opening of the new, environmentally minded,

sustainable facility that they boast is ‘good for people, good for animals.’ The facility was the

first registered ‘green’ animal shelter in the United States and provides comfortable, healthy

homelike settings for cats and dogs. This means that there are no bars in the entire facility – all

doors are made of ecofriendly glass and for animals capable and in need of socialization,

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particularly cats, there are suites that are designed to accommodate multiple animals with

climbing structures and toys built into the facility. (Tompkins County SPCA, 2007).

Other innovations range include: EcoVillage, the sustainable cohousing neighborhood

that works to change the impact that human culture has on the environment and itself; Kendal at

Ithaca, a locally initiated retirement community that created a partnership with the Kendal

Corporation to develop a 212 cottage community in affiliation with the local hospital (Pratt and

Haine, 2007); and Ithaca Forward, a revolutionary partnership between the Tompkins County

Chamber of Commerce and young professionals that works to facilitate the ability of young

workers to network and become a more integrated part of the community. As a part of Ithaca

Forward, the ‘Jump on Board’ program has enabled young professionals to connect with local

notforprofits seeking to break out of the cycle of continually recycling board member and find

new energy and ideas. The ‘Jump on Board’ program made 25 placements in 2006 and in 2007

tripled that number (McPheeters, 2008).

Joseph Cortright (2006) argues that another means of measuring innovation and

advancement is to look at the way communities are engaged on a personal level in volunteering,

notforprofit and community oriented endeavors, and politics. “The degree to which people

freely give their time and energy to advance community interests is a good indicator of

community involvement. Community involvement has economic as well as social

benefits,” (Cortright, 2006, p.32). The Ithaca community is based on activism, notforprofits and

volunteering.

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There are a number of volunteer, board member, and community action opportunities for

anyone to roll up their sleeves and participate in. Initiatives include housing, healthcare, mental

health, elderly care, child services, youth activities, homelessness, nutrition, family support and

more (Tompkins County Area Development, 2007). An example of the power of Ithaca’s

volunteerism is the local Sciencenter, which was completely built by volunteers and continues to

incorporate volunteers into its daily operations (Pratt and Haine, 2007).

The notforprofit base is readily apparent and has influenced the way that the entire city

operates, including the functioning of the Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce. According

to Jean McPheeters, the president of the Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce,

“Notforprofits have altered the way that the Chamber operates. Our policies are

probably different than the policies of a lot of Chambers. Many Chambers that are really

composted of totally forprofit people may have these policies that say ‘we shouldn’t

have changes in the minimum wage bill.’ That’s not going to fly here. It doesn’t fly with

our members. They say that’s crazy. They say ‘I’m already paying people well over the

minimum wage, why shouldn’t my competitors.” So there is just a different thought

process,” (McPheeters, 2008).

This thought process is a direct reflection of the progressive attitude affiliated with nonprofit

organizations that pervades Ithaca.

The deliberate thinking is also reflected in the political base in the Tompkins County

area. A strongly progressive area, Tompkins County is generally assumed to be a Democrat

haven, but there is also a strong number of Republicans. As Bossard says, “There’s a lot of

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conservatism, especially in the rural areas, but I think that there is an understanding and

acceptance of that, especially in Tompkins County,” (Bossard, 2008). The ability for integration

has enabled the area to develop a unique sense of political insight that pushes it to take charge, or

as Bossard says, “There’s a willingnesss to accept what the rest of N.Y. won’t,” (Bossard, 2008).

This was exemplified in the 2008 Democratic primary election in which Tompkins

County completely differed from the rest of New York State in results, According to McPheeters,

the reason was simple: “We’re different. Our economy is doing much better. We generally have a

much lower unemployment rate. Out people are different in that if you look at education levels, et

cetera. Our problems are different. We are politically very different. In the entire state of New

York this is the only county that went for Barak Obama. Every other county went to Clinton. And

we had high turnout for that election as well.” The atypical results illustrated just why Tompkins

County has such a significant draw: it’s young, hip, active, and the people are pushing the

boundaries to do things differently and in a funky kind of way.

FESTIVITIES AND A SENSE OF SELF

And how does Ithaca represent all of their complex and diverse traits: they throw a party.

The Ithaca Festival is a selfevident illustration of how Ithaca’s values, way of life, location and

landscape are inextricably linked together and translated into “a sense of community that

influences how the community celebrates,” (Derrett, 2006, p.40). The result is a complex human

dimension that is added to static dimension of space, animating the city into something that is

tangibly animated.

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In 1977, the Ithaca Festival was created as an arts fête to celebrate what they dubbed as

“the community and artist in each of us,” (Ithaca Festival, 2008). The very first festival in 1977

was funded by a NEA grant of $15,500. The project brought together professional artists of

national renown and combined them with the talents of the local community (Roberts, 2008).

The concept behind the festival’s creation was that it would bring together people in the

area to counteract what was seen as a national trend of community degradation. Former Festival

organizer, Cindy Scheibe summarized the concept and the impact that the festival had on the

unity and inspiration of the local community on the Festivals’ webpage:

“It’s like we’ve created Mardi Gras, something we’re going to have here every year. And

while it only lasts three days, the spirit will last all year and that’s what’s important. We

spend most of the long dreary winter and soggy spring wondering why we ever chose to

live in such a place...the Festival comes along and highlights all that is good and

wonderful (and sometimes hidden) here all year long.” (Ithaca Festival, 2008).

The second festival in 1978 established the annual tradition of holding the celebration on

the first weekend in June. Later on, the Festival became a highlight event of the area, sandwiched

between the Cornell University and Ithaca College graduation ceremonies held in the middle end

of May, and the GrassRoots Festival, established in 1991, and held eight weeks after the Ithaca

Festival in nearby Trumansburg the last weekend of July. Legend has it that this date was chosen

because it was the first weekend after the students left town, ensuring that the festival would be

local centric (Ithaca Festival, 2008). This year, however the festival will be held from June 19 to

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June 22, a week later to further emphasize the fact that it is the community’s festival, Ithaca’s

festival and not an affiliate of the Universities (Robert, 2008).

The festival began to symbolize Ithaca and the region’s people, values, and culture. The

emphasis on local music and arts is amplified only by the fact that everything is literally created

in Ithaca’s “backyard.” The lively celebration truly reflects the progressive upstate New York

community at the base of Cayuga Lake composed of artists, farmers, students, dreamers, absent–

minded professors, writers, activists, musicians, teachers, Tibetan monks, belly dancers, happy

families and hundreds and hundreds of rusted, but still serviceable Volvos (Ithaca Festival, 2008).

Since its inception, the Ithaca Festival has grown into a large scale celebration of a

unique community full of talent and rich with the vitality of people of all ages and ethnicities.

The first festival to be entirely financially supported by the local community without outside

grant support was in 1982. In 1986, the festival supporters created a nonprofit organization to

support the annual festivities. Now, the Ithaca Festival continues to operate as nonprofit

corporation (501–c–3). A volunteer Board of Directors establishes Festival policy. Employing a

year–round director and several seasonal part–time staff members, the organization also has more

than 200 community volunteers of all ages help transform the small town into a celebration each

year (Ithaca Festival, 2008).

One of the main benefits for local areas in the development of their brand, their image

and their identity is that they have the power to distort the distinction between performers and

audience members. As Jacob Alan Robert, executive director of the Ithaca Fest, explains, “the

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Ithaca Festival encourages people to come to the festival and be the biggest and brightest person

that they can be. We are trying to blur the lines between participating in the festival and being in

the audience,” (Robert, 2008).In essence they are all participants in cultural sharing. The purpose

of all who partake in the festivities is the same: “participants want to emerge from the event with

stories and experiences to talk about back home,” (Derrett, 2006, p.38). The entire program of the

Ithaca Festival is littered with interactive experiences where everyone can play a part in the

performances.

The Ithaca Festival even works to create an interactive experience well before the

festivities begin. The website is set up as a blog to enable social networking and an organized

way of getting involved. The website works to get cultural organizations and Ithaca locals to use

their own written words as well as video to speak up about what they do and why they love Ithaca

– something that truly matches the theme for 2008, ‘I am Ithaca.’ The point is to get the

conversation started as soon as possible in order to allow the community to develop the Ithaca

Festival. After all it is their festival (Robert, 2008).

This is also seen in the participant oriented mentality that pervades one of the most

popular the nonorganized activities of the festival: the drumming circle. Each year, at both

Dewitt Park and Stewart Park, there are always a group of individuals who have brought their

djembes and congas to the Ithaca Festival. Often, people even bring extra drums for other

community members to use. The concept is simple: someone starts drumming and others join in.

If people are lacking a drum, they dance or tap on the trees, slap their knees, clap their hands.

Robert added, “The drum circle is a perfect metaphor for the Ithaca community. Everyone can

85

find a place. For example if you are a shy and introverted person you can still tap on a tree instead

of drumming. Everyone can find the instrument that represents themselves. It is a gravitational

pull for all to be involved in,” (Robert, 2008). The product is literally a direct reflection of the

heartbeat of Ithaca.

A WORD OF MOUTH CONCLUSION

Large locations have the finances, the resources, and the speaking power to develop high

budget campaigns to promote themselves on the worldwide marketplace. The smaller provincial

cities were, as a result, often squeezed out of the benefits of branding because of their

powerlessness to promote on such a large scale. However, small places have the advantage of

interacting with people on an extremely personal level through arts, culture, food and innovation

– they can in effect tie the person’s identity to the location.

When these ties are developed, it is important to recognize that they too are branding

channels and that much of the publicity that a destination, particularly smaller destinations, will

receive comes from the unplanned and uncoordinated spread of the message through word of

mouth. In essence, location branding is the phenomenon that “public speaks to public” and the

true image can only be realized when “a substantial proportion of the population – not just the

civil servants and paid figureheads – gets behind the strategy and lives it out in their everyday

dealings with the outside world,” (Anholt, 2005, p.119).

And this is exactly what Howard Cogan did when he developed ‘Ithaca is Gorges.’ As

Jean McPheeters says, “He never copyrighted it. He was a smart enough adman to know what he

was doing when he didn’t do anything, and he did it for a specific reason,” (McPheeters, 2008) –

86

to give the brand legs. As exemplified with the cooperation in the green community, the

affiliation development initiatives in the Chamber of Commerce and the social networking in the

local arts community: Ithaca is a town of matrix building.

Locals have branched out and developed these social networks throughout the

community long before the advent of the popular social networking technology and the internet..

According to Brett Bossard:

“It’s no coincidence that Ithaca and Trumansburg is host to the grassroots festival

because grassroots really does take on a new meaning in Ithaca. It seems like everyone

does have this sort of connection or the idea of social networking that is done in things

like MySpace and Facebook. Ithacan’s have in a way been doing that just through places

like GreenStar [the local cooperative market], the Dewitt Park, and the Commons.

They’ve done it for so long. The technology is just duplicating something that Ithaca has

been doing a long time,” (Bossard, 2008).

The result is that Ithaca is far ahead of many local areas in its networking capability – and the

network far exceeds Ithaca’s political boundary, the zip code borders, and the school districts.

The entire surrounding area is melded into the Ithaca networks through their mindset that location

of residence and place of business is irrelevant; people are Ithacans because they are connected to

others who also have a connection to the city.

The college students are also Ithacans, transient members of the community but members

nonetheless. Spending four or more years of their life in the area, many of them are even apt to

say that they are no longer from the place of their childhood. If you meet them while traveling the

87

world, and you ask them where they are from, you get Ithaca as the answer (Bonn, 2008). And

this is proven by the fact that, despite how reluctant they might be when they first arrive, every

student will inevitably buy the ‘Ithaca is Gorges’ teeshirt, the brilliantly green coffee mugs, and

the bumper stickers that proclaim that Ithaca is ’10 square miles surrounded by reality.’

The result is the cultivation of an army of plainclothes ambassadors – people who

individually have the power to completely and permanently affect the conversion of one potential

consumer (Anholt, 2005). “When the entire population is galvanized into becoming the

mouthpiece of a country’s [or location’s] values and qualities, then you have an advertising

medium that is actually equal to the enormous task of communicating something so complex to

so many,” (Anholt, 2007, p.105). Every act that the population does is an act of promotion, every

exchange and representation is an end in itself – it is the opportunity to build Ithaca’s overall

reputation.

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http://quickfacts.census.gov/cgi-bin/qfd/lookup

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36/36109.html/



http://www.spcaonline.com/

http://www.tcad.org/businessInfo/statistics.php/

ERIKA L. ECKSTROM 4093 LAKE AVENUE (RT. 79) BURDETT, NEW YORK 14818 EMAIL: [email protected] PHONE: 607-342-5324

Letting the Grass Grow: Small Town Branding in the Finger Lakes

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