Partnership begins branding campaign to promote Hampton Roads identity

by Heather B. Hayes
for Virginia Business
February 2007

If two cities in the same region compete for a new business prospect, the city that doesn't land the project has a tendency to think it has somehow lost - and lost big.

Not so, says Dana Dickens, president of the Hampton Roads Partnership, a group that promotes regional competitiveness. Dickens, a former mayor of Suffolk, says that the region, not the city, is today's real economic development engine. "When one city within a region wins, everyone wins," he says.

That's why his organization has initiated a branding campaign that ties together the 10 cities, six counties and one town that make up the Hampton Roads region. The partnership's tagline - "Hampton Roads, America's First Region" - is based on a shared heritage.

"What we're trying to do is really raise the awareness level of the 1.6 million people in Hampton Roads of the interdependence of the region," explains Dickens. "By doing that, we think it will make it easier for us to cooperate and make ourselves more efficient and strong in our competition for new business opportunities and new jobs."

As a sense of regional identity grows, he says local governments and organizations will recognize creative ways to work together and begin joint projects, ultimately sharing resources and saving time and money.

Trash, sanitation and public transit programs are conducted regionally now, notes Dickens. And a recent study on commuting trends by the Transportation Research Board found that more than half of the area's residents work in a different locality than where they reside.

"We all shop in different cities, play in different cities," says Dickens. "Residents and businesses already treat it like a single economic unit in many, many ways, but I think this will just help raise people's awareness of that fact."