With all the talk about the “Orange County” brand, a change that recently has taken place will severely set back efforts to define this unique urban center.
And I’m not referring to the Angels’ name change. It’s not only an OC baseball team that now is “officially” part of Los Angeles.
According to government bureaucrats, all of us now are The County South of Los Angeles and Long Beach That Includes the City of Santa Ana.
A little history:
In the 1960s and 1970s this area we call home was referred to as “Santa Ana-Anaheim-Garden Grove.” This was our official “Metropolitan Statistical Area” or MSA designation, which currently is administered by the federal Office of Management and Budget.
In the 1980s the name of the MSA was changed to “Anaheim-Santa Ana” which, I only can assume, ticked off the good folks in Garden Grove.
In the summer of 1994, I asked the Board of Supervisors on behalf of Partnership 2010, the predecessor to the Orange County Business Council, to petition the feds to change the MSA name to “Orange County.” The Supervisors got behind the effort and in August of that year our request was granted.
As I wrote at the time to the leadership of P2010:
“This is the first time that the MSA designation has been given to a county rather than a major city within a county. The MSA designation is used in all official Census and other statistical data compiled by the U.S. government and frequently is used by marketing and demographic analysts and the national press in reporting trends and activity throughout the country. This is a first step in a campaign to position Orange County as a separate entity and area of Southern California.”
Now fast-forward to this past February. The ultimate insult has befallen us and it’s not the fault of a misguided sports team owner. We are now, according to the federal bureaucracy, officially part of Los Angeles!
The new MSA, which includes our beloved OC, is “Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana.”
To further confuse matters, the Office of Management and Budget has created the new subclass of “Metropolitan Division” within the MSA and we have taken a giant step backward in time. We are now the “Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine Metropolitan Division” of the aforementioned Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana MSA.
The OC,one of the most populous counties in the U.S.,is home to more than 3 million residents. A symbol of affluence around the globe. A separate market to anyone with a modicum of sense.
And yet we’re lumped in with L.A. as an MSA and can’t keep one of the most well known monikers in the country as our sub-name? Something is very wrong here.
The Office of Management and Budget argues that its policy is to use city names for MSAs and Metropolitan Divisions. Well, that argument doesn’t seem to hold true, in that Nassau and Suffolk Counties in New York are an MSA (or maybe it’s an MD, it’s confusing to say the least). Besides, we’ve had the “Orange County” name for the past decade.
If I didn’t know better I’d think that it was OC’s “Three Amigos” who were behind the step backward. Could Mayors Curt Pringle (Anaheim), Miguel Pulido (Santa Ana) and Larry Agran (no longer mayor but still hanging around Irvine City Council) be behind a move to get their cities’ names on all of the federal reports again? No, I can’t believe they would sacrifice The OC for a petty attempt at local boosterism.
Shall we go peacefully into the night on this? Or is this something business, government and the proud people of Orange County (located south of L.A. and Long Beach) should rage against?
Today, the OC Tourism Council, the coastal resorts, the technology community, the convention and visitors bureaus, the film commission and a bunch of others all are trying to find ways to brand Orange County. Ours is a home that is much more than three cities (although 30-plus is a little much).
It’s time the players in the county rally and push to have our designation changed back to “Orange County.”
The California brand is worth tens of billions of dollars. The Southern California brand is worth billions. And the Orange County brand is worth hundreds of millions. Look to any company with a strong identity. A brand is something that must be defended.
The OC Board of Supervisors, OC Business Council, OC Tourism Council, OC Film Commission, OC Business Journal, OC Register (are you seeing any trend here?) should commit resources and political muscle to work together with our OC Congressional delegation to change the federal designation.
It may be impossible to separate us from L.A.’s MSA shadow but we should try. At the very least, the Metropolitan Division name should be changed back to “Orange County.” We did it in 1994, we can do it again in 2005.
I can see the campaign slogans now:
“Orange County It Was There Last Time I Looked” or “What Part of ‘Orange County’ Don’t You Understand?” or “O say can you C?”
Cooley is a corporate strategist in Irvine.
