I’m with Keep It California…
Sal Hapatica. Wild Root Cream Oil. Ipana Toothpaste.
These oddly named products may well have adorned the pages of The Yreka Daily News in 1941 when, at the behest of industrial magnate Gilbert Gable, it ran a contest to name the area of Northern California and Southern Oregon vying a split from California and Oregon proper. None of these products are around today in part because they have odd names that helped competing products to eclipse them. Of the contest entries, entirely forgettable offerings included Mittelwestcoastia, Orofino, Bonanza, Del Curiskiou, Siscurdelmo, New West, New Hope, Discontent, and Jefferson were entered. Unsurprisingly, Jefferson claimed the $2.00 prize.
Gable was improvising from the playbook of Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud. Bernays, noting the wide popularity of Suffragette movement, parlayed it’s popularity to launch we know today as Public Relations. Using New York City’s 1929 Easter Parade as his stage, Bernays gathered press photographers and created a national spectacle as a paid phalanx of wealthy debutantes to light their Torches of Freedom on cue . In the process he gave American women equal opportunity to addiction, cancer and death while making billions for his employer with the liberating torch of the cigarette.
Fast forward to the summer of 2015. During the course of 15 small town events in South Placer County, my team of volunteers and I introduced our version of the Torch of Freedom, liberty and representation to the unwashed (ok, mostly washed) masses with Jefferson flags festooning our popup booth. The reaction from the public could be roughly shoehorned into three typical encounters:
- People looked at me as if my hair was on fire, the most brave almost quietly sharing a variant of “batshit crazy-Tea Party on steroids-nutjob” with their accomplice as they walked by.
- People made a beeline to the signature pad and told me if we “didn’t have this done by (fill-in-the-date) when I retire, we are outta here”.
- The vast majority, however, had no idea what we are up to: “I guess I’ve seen the Jefferson stickers and signs somewhere but I have no idea what you are up to, what gives?”
The latter group, one that I estimate to be more than 85% of Placer County, listened with interest, to our pitch and replied with different flavors of these two questions:
1) How will we be able to afford this new state? Won’t we end up poorer than the hillbillies in Appalachia?
2) “Dude, Jefferson sucks. What’s wrong with NorCal?”
To the first question I got plenty (We are working on something to replace the nightmarish “finance” tab on the “official” soj51.net website which The Democrat Party funded PAC, Keep it California, uses to hoist us on our own petard. Stay tuned).
To the second, I got nothing.
When it comes to swaying public sentiment and creating traction for a product or idea, Branding is (nearly) everything. Several years ago, in a previous life as the owner of a print production company, my team was involved with delivering the Raley’s and Bel Air Wednesday Food Insert for in 50 different newspapers (this was just as Craigslist was firing up it’s chainsaw readying to cut the entire newspaper industry off at the knees with what is today a roughly 80 employee company). In 2003 I remember discussing one of the more monumental blunders in branding history (save perhaps naming your child Adolph or standing in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner), when a national food association dropped their proven, successful and long running branding campaign for the utterly forgettable “Be Inspired!” Have you heard an ad for any food product since 2003 that left you inspired? Me either.*
Many supporters insist we retain the name Jefferson. They offer arguments like: Washington State is the second door to the north. Jefferson was a singular genius among geniuses within our mythical national founders. The name Jefferson represents our desire to become something as completely different from the miasma of California. Jefferson is what the movement has been known for the last 70 years and is steeped with tradition, more so the further north you travel. And so on. With each of these argument I empathize.
However, the purpose of a brand is to crystallize subconscious neural synapses (try saying that three times fast) so the brain, within pico-seconds, retrieves a visual representation of the subject matter (along with any smells, emotions, songs, moods and colors in inventory) and reinforces an impression on both the conscious and unconscious mind. Tell someone you are from Jefferson and you will likely get a blank stare. Tell anyone on the planet you are from NorCal and they will instantly have a vision in mind of Northern California (sadly, some may retrieve the Golden Gate Bridge or the TransAmerica building which we all know reside in Central California).
So like I said in the title, I’m with keeping it California, Northern California that is. And with all proper fanfare, pomp and circumstance and giddy excitement, I hereby christen our effort as: “The Jefferson movement of Northern California” May the light of Liberty shine throughout our borders and rekindle the flame of freedom across our United States.
- 2003 was the last time anyone was paid to pimp the still potent slogan “The Other White Meat” #becausebranding
