“EMILY ANGRY!!!”
Ok, so I’ve been in Salem for about four months now and I’ve seen all stripes of Willamette.
Willamette Dental, Willamette University, Willamette Noodle Co., Willamette Writers, Willamette Week, Willamette Valley Vineyards, Willamette Bank.
Would the real Willamette please stand up? oh wait, you’re a Superfund site meandering through the state and lending your name from everything from noodles to PC Services. Cheeky little river.
I’m no branding expert, but I know a muddled down geographical brand fiasco when I see one.
How can one name be desirable both to some of the country’s most enterprising investigative reporters and a dental chain?
Willamette is a pretty loaded word. Willamette University has a pretty clear claim to the title, it is, after all, practically located on the river and was the first U.S. university in the West.
But it seems to me that all you need to do is add Willamette to your business name and all of a sudden you have steeped it in images of settlers homesteading the Willamette Valley. That’s not an image that lends itself to everything (Willamette Scrapbooking Co.? Willamette Enema Professionals?).
The inherent problem with tacking Willamette on to everything is it starts to mean absolutely nothing. Also, since Willamette has a deep and revered history here as a word, and a place, it can’t help but seem incongruous with some of the modern applications it’s attached to.
Or perhaps the ubiquity of Willamette is just a none-too-subtle way to keep us newcomers from feeling okay here since we obviously can’t spell it or say it.
And it’s everywhere.
Don’t even get me started on Lancaster Drive.
Stop!! You’re giving me giggling fits! Love the pic!
One of the first things my husband and I did when we arrived here in 1998 was stop at the Visitor’s Center at Mission Mill, where the volunteer at the counter started us off on the right foot by teaching us how to pronounce the “W” word (“It’s WillAMette, dammit!”). Then he opened up the city map we’d gone in there for and made sure to circle Salem Center and Lancaster Mall for me, because I’m a woman so of course I would want to do some shopping! I smiled and let it go because he was really, really old, and he meant well, and the pronunciation lesson was worth the whole stop.
Our first stop was the visitor’s center as well. We met a woman spinning her dog’s hair into yarn there and knitting it into a cap.
I guess I’m mad because everything’s called willamette and it waters down the word.
New theory. Open business in Salem or any other valley location, call yourself Willamette Whatever and then you are at least primed to open up franchises regionally.
Forty years ago, Salem businesses were prefixed by “Cherry City”: Cherry City Garage, Cherry City Dental, Cherry City Laundry, etc. However, “Willamette” has a larger pool to draw from even though it sacrifices some of the coziness. We’re all one, big, happy metro area, now. Sigh.