Area To Be Touted As 'Performance USA'

By: David McGee/Bristol Herald Courier | TriCities.com
Published: May 02, 2008

KINGSPORT, Tenn. – A new marketing campaign designed to recruit businesses and industries will label the region as Performance USA.

The campaign, which is set to begin immediately, is the brainchild of the Regional Alliance for Economic Development, a Blountville-based organization that serves eight East Tennessee counties and two in Southwest Virginia.

"We are not re-branding this region," said Andy Burke, president and CEO of the alliance. "Our brand is Tri-Cities Tennessee-Virginia."

Burke said the new campaign, which was unveiled at a news conference at the MeadowView Marriott Conference, Resort & Convention Center, was developed during the past two years of marketing research.

"The region’s most well-known brand is Bristol Motor Speedway, both around the world and across the U.S.," Burke said. "But performance is more than that."

The plan is to market the region’s existing businesses and work force as performance-driven because those are traits prospective business leaders are seeking, Burke said.

He compared the new moniker to the Research Triangle in North Carolina or Silicon Valley in California.

Much of the advertising will be based around testimonials of successful area business leaders, Burke said. The first will feature speedway owner Bruton Smith.

The alliance plans to soon begin distributing information about the region, featuring the Performance USA tag, to its mailing list of about 3,000 business, real estate and development leaders.

"Economic development is a process not an event," Burke said. "I would hope in six to nine months we would have excellent coverage of this new identity for our region."

C. Newton Raff, chairman-elect of the alliance, said the organization will encourage businesses and local governments to embrace the new identity and include it on Web pages, stationary and other communications.

"Not only is it descriptive and motivational, it’s a really great theme for us to adopt as a region," Raff said.

The alliance was established about three years ago by a group of area business leaders, including Raff, chairman of First Tennessee Bank; Eastman Chemical Chairman Brian Ferguson; and Scott Niswonger, past chairman of Landair Transport.

More than 80 area firms, including the Bristol Herald Courier and News Channel 11, have invested in the alliance.

dmcgee@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2532