Take a trip to upstate Pennsylvania without ever leaving your home

BY JAMES HAGGERTY (STAFF WRITER)
Published: May 19, 2009

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You don't have to go to New York to visit Upstate anymore.

You're already there - in Northeast Pennsylvania.

Five regional tourism agencies on Wednesday will unveil an 11-county marketing strategy promoting Northeast Pennsylvania as "Upstate PA."

The new promotion, which targets "the roof-rack crowd" and replaces the former Northeast PA Mountains designation, highlights the region's outdoor attractions. It includes Bradford, Carbon, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Monroe, Pike, Schuylkill, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Wayne and Wyoming counties.

"We're not trying to re-brand Northeast Pennsylvania," said Tracy Barone, executive director Lackawanna County Convention & Visitors Bureau and president of the Upstate PA board. "It's an advertising campaign that is tied to our new regional name for tourism's sake."

The ad campaign, which spotlights a car loaded with outdoor gear, promotes vastly different areas as a whole region, highlighting their offerings and the traditional tourism spots.

"To bring it all under one tent and umbrella but not to take away from our own individual attributes was difficult," admitted Carl Wilgus, executive director of the Pocono Mountains Vacation Bureau.

"We're all very different," Ms. Barone said. "We all still have our niche (tourism) campaigns that we run."

The state began developing heritage tourism regions in 2003 and eventually created the Northeast PA Mountains label for this area. State funding incentives for more regional cooperation drew the various tourism agencies to finally encompass a larger region with a new theme - a takeoff on Upstate New York.

"We bantered it around for three or four years," Ms. Barone said of the 11-county association. "Change happens slowly."

The state provided $320,000 for regional tourism marketing in fiscal 2007-08 and pledged $322,000 in 2008-09, which the new agency is still awaiting, Ms. Barone said. The new marketing drive has no full-time staff and will be coordinated by existing tourism promoters.

The scheme gives Lackawanna County exposure that differs from its usual pitch for industrial heritage attractions, such as the Steamtown National Historic Site and the model mine tour, Ms. Barone said.

"We didn't have the money available to promote outdoor recreation," she said.

Pocono tourism promoters "will adjust some of our advertising buy so as not to compete with this," Mr. Wilgus said. "It definitely brings added value to what we're doing."

The campaign will be introduced formally at 2 p.m. Wednesday at Lackawanna College's Mellow Theater.

On the Web: www.upstatepa.org

Contact the writer: jhaggerty@timesshamrock.com

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@ Doug "The Flash site delivers in terms of the point of the site, promote upstate pa."

Doug if you Judge the site's promotions on its graphical look and feel, the site gets an A+ -- it is beautiful.

However, if you view promotions as an interconnectedness of information that is easily searchable, expandable and accessible by the general population, the site gets a D.

Perhaps you are the site's developer. If so, bravo for your Flash work and the graphics. My choice would have been to wrap that beautiful work into a CMS with the more detailed information such as lodging, events, links, etc, stored in a database and presented in a more modular fashion as opposed to the annoying Pop-Ups as required by Flash.

Modern trends in web and information design support this latter approach.

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Danny, 05/20/09 03:23

@Doug --

Doug a CMS makes a lot of sense for this project as new businesses, new biking and hiking trails, an event calendar, a forum -- all will need to added, updated and maintained regularly. The current website as they have built it is a management, search engine and layout disaster that looks really cool.

From a FUNCTIONAL and SEARCH perspective, it will be a completely underperforming tool for "upstate PA."

It's limited framework will restrict "organic" google search capabilities and prevent the viral spread of the website.

Sadly as it stands, this website will require expensive advertising and promotions to make the public aware of its existence. Not the smarted move in a down economy when superior technological choices exist.

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Danny, 05/20/09 03:11

@Doug —

Sorry Doug, but you are mistaken on your assertion that a CMS is "for content management by the client, not the viewing public . . ."

A Content Management System organizes content for viewing and for correlation between content. It does not matter if the content is viewed by an "administrator," "by the producer," "or by the consumer."

Content is content. How to best organize, present and track such content -- to achieve informational, marketing, sales and promotional goals is the key. As such a CMS is the best tool. Flash is an ill-suited replacement often used by designers and producers who don't know any better.

I've got a successful company and 24 years experience backing me up on this point.

Flash as a mistake in this case, at least, using Flash as the PRIMARY framework to deliver the content was. The Flash portion should have been wrapped in a powerful CMS.

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Danny, 05/20/09 03:04

@Danny
"but they could have been incorporated into a website framework with much more power and expandability via a website CMS (Content Management System).
The use of a Flash driven website was a really expensive "miss" in this respect."

CMS is for content management by the client not the viewing public so that line makes no sense.
The Flash site delivers in terms of the point of the site, promote upstate pa.

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Doug, 05/20/09 10:45

Why has the Lackwanna County tourist agency leader named president of this? Lackawanna County probably has one of the lower tourist draws in the region. The Pocono's have been attracting tourist for many, many years. Why wasn't a the Pocono Tourism agency put in charge of this? They are the closest thing "upstate Pa" has to professionals. I can see this thing being totally skewed towards Scranton, and Lackawanna County, but really, who wants to go visit some has-been, rust belt, dying town like Scranton anyway, especially if you are from a real city like Philly or New York? this region's best attributes are it's outdoors/natural offerings, not it's post industrial, rust belt towns like Wilkes-Barre or scranton But I'll bet my last dollar that this campaign will revolve around Scranton's puny offerings anyway. What a joke!

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PLLEEAASSE!, 05/20/09 10:09

This is why regionalism will never work. Who decided that Lackawanna county gets to be the prisident of the organization? Everybody knows that Lackawanna County is going to be more heavily promoted then all the other county because of this. Luzerne County is the largest county in our region and also the geographic heart of our region. Why weren't they chosen as president? Also doesn't upstate Pa apply from even northern county from Pike County to Erie County, and "upstate Pa" is totally un original, and a complete rip off of "upstate NY" Can't we think of something better then that? How Lame! i will not even ecknowledge this.

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bill, 05/20/09 09:28

Upstate PA makes no sense at all. As for New York, Due to the shape of New York, Upstate New York defines the area above New York City. People say they live in the city or upstate.

Since Pa is a rectangle, upstate Pa could mean Erie, or any place at the top of the state.

NEPA makes sense, since we are in the northeast part of Pa.

No matter what campaign is used, it is a waste of money. It would be interesting to see a study that determines how many people visited our area because of ads. I think people come here because they come back to visit an area that they came to as kids to see relatives. Not because of some slick web site or ad campaign.

Hopefully Upstate Pa will last as long as Lackawanna Wonderful.

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R, 05/20/09 07:50

It makes no sense, our state is rectangular.

If they wanted bad ideas, I have those in spades;
how about 'Northeast Pennsylvania: Pennsyl us in.'

Any chance we could lobby to have it changed from 'upstate' to 'up da line?'

I mean think about it, it makes a lot more sense - fishing line, rail line, etc.

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Luna, 05/19/09 07:53

The Upstate PA website is really poorly designed from a search and user-friendliness perspective. Yes, the animated Flash visuals are really cool, but they could have been incorporated into a website framework with much more power and expandability via a website CMS (Content Management System).

The use of a Flash driven website was a really expensive "miss" in this respect.

So kudos on the graphics but a "huge miss" on the website framework. This website will severely handicap this campaign.

I speak from experience: my company builds world class websites daily.

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Danny, 05/19/09 02:38

Up-State PA. ? Where?....Central UP?.. West UP?...East UP?....Come On..Get with it.
Remember PA History? it goes like this....
NEPA = "North East" Pennsylvania (*gee I can spell!)
NWPA = "North West" Pennsylvania
SEPA = "South East" Pennsylvania
SWPA = "South West" Pennsylvania
SCPA = "South Central" Pennsylvania
NCPA = "North Central" Pennsylvania
See How Simple!
Upstate/Downstate/...what a joke !!

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Jimmy in NWNJ, 05/19/09 02:38

I love the comment on being outsourced to a New Jersey agency. It's called "competitive bidding!" Remember our former commissioners who spent $5 thousand a month to five local ad agencies to retain them?? Let them see what it's like to have to rise to the occassion. As for the new campaign, I love it. The website rocks and the visuals are really cool. Makes me want to Mount Up and have fun. As Manny Gordon would say: Enjoy, Enjoy!!

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UpState Pa-er, 05/19/09 02:17

I agree with Steven, why have the work done by a NJ company when they are not located inside "Upstate PA". Then again I guess nobody lives in Upstate PA unless your from Erie of course.

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AJ, 05/19/09 01:51

I agree with Steven, why have the work done by a NJ company when they are not located inside "Upstate PA". Then again I guess nobody lives in Upstate PA unless your from Erie of course.

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AJ, 05/19/09 01:49

Fun and memorable. NEPA is just 4 letters. It doesn't conjure up anything in my mind. When I hear Upstate PA, I think mountains, streams, nature...ahhh, an escape.

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Hank, 05/19/09 01:21

Fun and memorable. NEPA is just 4 letters. It doesn't conjure up anything in my mind. When I hear Upstate PA, I think mountains, streams, nature...ahhh, an escape.

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Hank, 05/19/09 12:42

Anyway you spin it, it's still ARM PIT OF AMERICA.

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Pilchesky's brain on drugs, 05/19/09 11:19

HEY TOM and NEPA NEWS FLASH: LOOK OUT THE WINDOW--It is the boonies of Philadelphia and New York--That's what makes it great.

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Rex Goliath, 05/19/09 11:19

I think its a great idea and will be good for the region. People from out of state have never heard of NEPA, they don't even know how to pronounce it. Upstate PA is fun.

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Ralph, 05/19/09 10:45

What are you people on about? The website looks awesome. Not sure where yall are pulling negative connotations from, but I think this is just what this area needs.

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Steven, 05/19/09 10:27

of course "NEPA" sounds better, the less syllables the better for most of the people in this area - its a tourism campaign, settle everyone

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stuart, 05/19/09 10:25

Take a trip to upstate Pennsylvania without ever leaving your home

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