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MossColumn: Digging into 'Life's Playground'

By Bill Moss, Published: August 17, 2015

Marketing is not easy.

If everyone could do it, all products, even lame ones, would make a go of it. But with the exception of novelties like Tickle Me Elmo, Chia pets and everything Kardashian, a product that sells generally has value at its core. Overpriced Apple products continue to be market leaders because they do the job, are easy to use and almost never break.
Hendersonville and Henderson County have enough earned cache to make it in the marketplace — whether as a tourist destination, a retirement home or a place to locate a company.
What’s our brand?
I read in an Ask Matt column that the “City of Four Seasons” goes back 60 years to the Kermit Edney days when a small group of visionary leaders cooked up good ideas like that brand and, 20 years later, the zigzagging of Main Street. Yet instead of being a lasting expression of our cache, “Four Seasons” is passé. A year and a half ago, during a retreat to envision to the future, the City Council talked about a proposed new brand — Mountain Cool. The council seemed hot on the idea but the passion cooled and the rebranding effort vanished.
Now, evidently, we have a new brand.
We’re “Life’s Playground.”
At least that is according to the county Tourism Development Authority and a well-paid consultant (whose resume included marketing studies and brand updates for Myrtle Beach and some shopping malls).
The response so far has been underwhelming.
A poll in the Hendersonville Lightning showed three out of four people voting no on the question of whether they liked it. Our polls are decidedly unscientific, but they still have value. A question about a nonpolitical issue like a marketing brand is not subject to the ballot stuffing we see with our campaign questions.

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People react to “Life’s Playground” not so much in virulent opposition as confusion or apathy. The expression doesn’t ring the bell.
Where is this playground?
I know the marketers will say it’s all around. It’s on the roads and trails, where we can bike and run. It’s on the rivers and (a few) lakes, where we can paddle and tube and fish. It’s in the woods, where we can camp and hunt. But Hendersonville has more gravitas than a playground implies. Some of our best assets — the Flat Rock Playhouse, the Hendersonville Symphony Orchestra — are indoors. Main Street, with its many historic buildings, may be our single best attraction. I still remember the stories about how much the Grossman family — the owners of Sierra Nevada — enjoyed walking up and down Main Street in this little North Carolina mountain town. Main Street has more to do with shopping and dining, even if some people do make a sport of shopping. Is it a playground? Doesn’t quite fit.

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Maybe this is trial placeholder copy I read on the first “Life’s Playground” ads.
The creator careens haphazardly from second- to third-person voice. Winning the safe statement of the week award, the copywriter declares that we’re “a place unlike any other.” Then: “Hendersonville calls us all to get up, seek out and explore new experiences.”
Switching twice more from second-person back to third-person and juxtaposing a mountain experience with an indoor tasting room visit, the copywriter beckons the visitor to “find yourself hiking through the DuPont State Recreational Forest or touring the Sierra Nevada Brewery. Be moved. That’s what happens in Hendersonville.”
That’s some mixed-up prose.
We look forward to a fuller explanation next Tuesday when the TDA officially rolls out “Life’s Playground.” We’re sure — well, we sure hope — that the marketers will put some meat on these bones. The TDA has yet to present the new brand to the Board of Commissioners or the Hendersonville City Council or any of the town councils. We look forward to hearing how the TDA and its marketing consultant propose to incorporate the new brand into the new signage and wayfinding efforts. These should be on a parallel track. The city just finished putting new signs on Main Street promoting the shops and restaurants on the avenues. No “Life’s Playground” image is on those.
We’ll be waiting, in a playful sort of way, to hear the TDA’s strategy for promoting its new promotion. The tourism industry around here is, after all, serious business.

Reach Lightning Editor Bill Moss at billmoss@hendersonvillelightning.com.