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At left, Mary Kay Wydra of the Greater Springfield Vistors Bureau and Convention Center poses with a Pioneer Valley logo in a 2014 photo; At right Michelle Goldberg and Wydra pose with the new West Mass logo at the brand launch party in February.
(Republican file photo)
SPRINGFIELD -- If it was intended to get people talking, it has certainly done that.
The Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts last month rebranded Hampshire, Hampden and Franklin counties under the name "West Mass."
West Mass is a catchy, modern marketing slogan designed to attract outside money, according to supporters. But for those who prefer the name Pioneer Valley -- or simply dislike the name West Mass -- the rebranding sparked reactions ranging from eye-rolls to anger.
Mary Kay Wydra, president of the Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, said she was not sure why people were so upset. West Mass, she said, is just a variation on another common term for the region, Western Mass., minus three letters.
"This is just a twist on that," Wydra said.
Since the unveiling on Feb. 7, the anti-West Mass blowback has been unrelenting. Much of it is from area residents, but there is also some from Pioneer Valley expatriates.
Over the last month, West Mass has been panned, pooh-poohed and pummeled in thousands of comments on social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Reddit. An online petition opposing the name has attracted more than 1,200 signatures.
A 2-minute promotional video for West Mass was posted on YouTube and drew 43,000 views. But judging from the comments there and even in traditional media, few of the views were favorable.
Two Boston publications, The Boston Globe and Boston Magazine, have run articles about the West Mass controversy. A Berkshire Eagle reader poll showed 5 percent supported the West Mass name, 11 percent were unsure and 83 percent picked "Are you serious?"
An editorial in the Daily Hampshire Gazette said "snipping the '-ern' off Western Mass. and calling ourselves mavericks" is less of a home run than it is "a pop fly bending toward the foul line."
Wydra said she understands people's attachment to and pride in the Pioneer Valley name. "I get that. I grew up here too," she said.
No one, she said, is trying to get rid of the Pioneer Valley name, which originated in tourism promotions of the 1930s. People can continue using it, she said. The idea behind West Mass is to appeal to people outside this region, not to infuriate those inside it.
Richard Sullivan, a former Westfield mayor and now president and CEO of the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts, said that in retrospect the pushback over the West Mass name could have been anticipated.
"The whole idea of (the region) being mavericky, of being yourself, challenging authority, and doing your own thing, this is what you're seeing," he said.
Many of the region's businesses, organizations and schools have Pioneer Valley incorporated into their names.
Mary MacInnis, administrator of the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority, said there are no plans to become the West Mass Transit Authority. "It would be too expensive for the PVTA to rename itself," she said. "It's a nonstarter for us."
Pioneer Valley Popcorn in Shelburne feels the same way. "We have heard of this issue but do not have any plans to change our name from Pioneer Valley Popcorn to anything else," said a company spokeswoman in an email.
Over in Berkshire County, West Mass was met with a degree of bemusement, said Jaclyn Stevenson, director of communications with Winstanley Partners, a Lenox marketing firm.
"No one was up arms about it, but people were like, 'I don't get it,'" she said.
The Berkshires are part of Western Massachusetts, but mountainous region has never been part of the Pioneer Valley. Stevenson said it is not altogether clear if the Berkshires are to be considered part of West Mass.
Nor do the Berkshires necessarily have to be, she said. The region has its own brand that is recognizable for tourists. "We got our own thing going," she said.
If they were looking for a catchy name that includes all four Western Massachusetts counties -- and not just "the lower three," as people in the Berkshires refer to Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin -- Stevenson suggested something with hashtag appeal.
"If it were up to me, I'd go with 'The 413,'" she said, referring to the telephone area code.
Sullivan said the point of the West Mass rebrand is not to change life in the Pioneer Valley but to attract people from outside of it. West Mass has a broader appeal in the eastern part of the state and outside of Massachusetts, while Pioneer Valley can be difficult to market, he said.
Poll after poll found that people in other states did not know where the Pioneer Valley is, he said. Meanwhile, anyone with a basic understanding of American geography can figure out where Western Massachusetts is.
Referring to MassLive.com, Sullivan said, "Not to be flip, but there's a reason you guys aren't called 'Pioneer Valley Live.'"
Dylan Pilon, owner of Cloud 9 Marketing Group in East Longmeadow, is a vocal critic of the West Mass name.
"They have the audacity to say no one uses the Pioneer Valley, that no one knows where it is," he said.
To protest the rebranding, Pilon launched a petition on Change.org calling for an end to West Mass. The original goal was to get 1,000 signatures. This past week the number reached more than 1,200, and Pilon is now seeking to get more than 2,400. That, he said, would be more than the number of likes on the Visit West Mass page on Facebook.
"I have yet to see anyone in any of the comment threads that has defended West Mass -- other than the people involved," he said. "Ninety-nine percent think it's a bad idea."
Pilon objects to the visitors bureau and EDIC spending $80,000 to hire Cubic Advertising Agency of Tulsa, Oklahoma, to develop the West Mass idea. The money came from member businesses and state grant funding the visitors bureau receives.
"There are creative agencies in the area that could have handled this," he said.
Cloud 9 Marketing is presumably one of those agencies, but Pilon said he did not submit a bid when the project was advertised.
"This is not about some whiny millennial whose ad agency got passed over for this," he said. "That's not what this is at all."
Sullivan said the selection of Cubic came after a yearlong public process that involved advertising locally and nationally. There were as many as 20 proposals submitted, including some from this area, he said.
Cubic, although it's based in Oklahoma, specializes in "place brands," or a distinctive name for a geographical entity, and that is exactly what the EDC and visitors bureau were looking for, Sullivan said. The $80,000 cost is an industry standard for that sort of campaign, he said.
The plan is to use local talent from here on out when possible, Sullivan said.
The EDC and visitors bureau did use local talent, Porterhouse Media of Holyoke, to create a West Mass video.
But once it was posted on online, it was met with the kind of ridicule from anonymous comments that the internet is known for. One person on Reddit described the video, with its quick edits, techno music and use of one-word descriptions of the region like "fertile" and "modest" as "the most cringe-worthy video you will see today."
Fallout from the video was such that the owner of Porterhouse Media, DJ Steve Porter, felt a need to defend himself in Boston Magazine. He said the video was a rush job and that it was intended to be shown only to the audience at the West Mass unveiling.
"I was just the postman," he was quoted as saying. "I was just delivering the package to the door and now I'm getting absolutely throttled."
Sullivan backed up Porter's comments, saying the video was not intended as a centerpiece in the West Mass campaign. Porterhouse Video was hired at last minute to make a video for the launch party.
"It was to create excitement in the room at the rollout," Sullivan said.
Other campaign videos are planned, he said.
Peter Rosskothen, owner of the Delaney House and Log Cabin in Holyoke, said he supports West Mass because it will make the area more marketable to outsiders.
"At the end, we are all better off if we attract more people," he said.
Most businesses that advertise outside the region prefer to say Western Massachusetts instead of Pioneer Valley because it is more descriptive, he said.
"West Mass is a cool, trendy derivative of what we already do," he said. "This brand works as a tourism driver, and also as a development driver."
He is convinced that the people who do not like the West Mass name do not understand how it was adopted or why. It was selected with the input and support of hundreds of businesses in the area, he said.
"The brand is a tool, and it's not intended to replace anything you or I would like to call the area," Rosskothen said.
Carol de Carlo, owner of CamelotHot Communications in Springfield, said she is a little surprised at the anti-West Mass fallout. Most people who live in the region are never going to see the West Mass campaign in action because the target audience is not the Pioneer Valley, she said.
As for her preference in the West Mass vs. Pioneer Valley debate, de Carlo said she's not really in either camp.
"I live in Western Mass. I say Western Mass.," she said.