San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
THE FAR NORTH GETS A REBRAND.
Northern California — and by “northern,” we mean northern — has an image problem: It has no image.
The sparsely populated inland region north of Wine Country makes up 20 percent of the state’s landmass, a sweeping area about the size of Maine. It encompasses eight counties — Tehama, Butte, Plumas, Lassen, Trinity, Shasta, Modoc and Siskiyou — and houses national parks and forests with enviable recreational opportunities. It is as scenic and striking as nearly any part of the country.
But when it comes to tourism, the numbers aren’t so picturesque: Maybe 3 million people visit the region each year. Compare that to the 36 million who traipsed through Maine last year or the 18 million who stopped by San Francisco’s 49 square miles and the numbers look even worse.
You could blame the paucity of visitors on the region’s relative remoteness or lack of brand-name tourism destinations, but Laurie Baker, general manager of the Shasta-Cascade Wonderland Association, a nonprofit tourism advocacy organization, thinks the problem may be a perceived lack of identity.
Although there is no technical definition of “Northern California,” NorCal tends to refer to the Bay Area and everything above — never mind that San Francisco is some 300 miles south of the Oregon border. It also manages to encompass eastern destinations like Yosemite and Lake Tahoe.
How, then, do you differentiate the state’s beautiful, untouched northernmost quarter? The Far North? Extreme North? True North?
Last year, Baker was at a tourism industry event and met a colleague from Upstate New York. “As soon as she said Upstate New York, a picture came into my head,” Baker says. As Adirondacks and serpentine lakes and apple cider donuts filled her mind’s eye, it hit her.
“Oh, my gosh,” she thought. “We need to be Upstate C-A.”
Since then, Baker has gotten much of the far north’s tourism sector on board with the new moniker. Upstate CA — not Upstate California, thank you very much — now headlines tens of thousands of tourism brochures and is being used by local economic development corporations, chambers of commerce and local tourism operators.
It’s too soon to say if the rebranding will have any material effects on tourism, but Baker is thrilled with the buy-in. (A private marketing specialist tried to rebrand the region 17 years ago — he launched a campaign in 2001 — but the attempt never caught on with local officials.)
The move has also allowed the region to sidestep a long-simmering “NorCal” debate.
“Everybody has a different idea of what ‘NorCal’ is. We would say you (San Franciscans) don’t live in NorCal,” Baker says. “Up here, groups would say we’re True Northern or we’re Far Northern. They’re all like fighting terms, in a sense.”
Baker adds: “Anything over the grapevine is NorCal to Southern Californians.”
This is, after all, the region at the center of a grassroots movement to secede from liberal California. Drive through just about any community north of Sacramento County and you’ll spot “State of Jefferson” signs and banners in front yards. And although not exactly secession, the Upstate rebranding helps the north forge a separate identity.
“This differentiates us from everywhere else,” Baker says. “That’s the beauty of this — San Franciscans can still be NorCal people. We’re the Upstate people. And now San Franciscans feel like they’re going someplace when they visit us.”
With the new branding in place, Baker hopes her tourism pitch can stick.
“What sets us apart from the rest of California is the outdoors,” she says. “When you get out here, your blood pressure drops. There’s no hustle and bustle. The air’s clean, the water’s clean. Twenty percent of the land mass and 3 percent of the population.”
And if that doesn’t work, Baker has one last pitch: “Like Oregon, but with more sunshine.”