— While I appreciate the spirit of a new marketing campaign in the Johnstown region, I’m not sure the faces fit the message.

Alongside the theme “Hard Work Still Works Here,” the faces of local corporate executives smile down from billboards, off the television screen or from advertisements in the pages of this newspaper, extolling the virtues of doing business in the Johnstown area.

Given the uncertainty prompted by the February death of powerful (meaning with fingers on purse strings) Congressman Jack Murtha, a new plan was in order.

Johnstown is a community with a long tradition of hard-working folks making a living through their own sweat and determination, at times overcoming extreme obstacles to provide for their families.

But are the individuals featured in this campaign the best examples of Johnstown’s “hard work works” mantra?

Not really.

The campaign spotlights top-level folks at nine companies from sectors such as defense, heavy industry, health care, technology and engineering. All good people doing great things.

Those companies were picked because collectively they represent more than 11,000 local jobs.

Hard to argue with that.

And it is true that in most communities, efficient and successful organizations got that way and stay that way because they are led by committed and hardworking executives.

Indeed, many of this region’s top executives are also this region’s biggest cheerleaders and most ardent supporters.

They volunteer on boards and committees, they give unselfishly of their time and talents and they make the area better in many ways.

However, those executives are not the faces of “hard work” at their own companies, let alone for an entire community.

Theirs are the faces of leadership, of ingenuity, of direction. Perhaps even passion.

The marketing campaign tells us we’re seeing people “Like you ... Bright people. Bright future.”

Most who see or hear that message probably appreciate the compliment and the optimism, without seeing how it reflects themselves.

The campaign did a great job incorporating diversity into its images and messages. And we are a diverse region.

But do most folks look at the faces in these television and newspaper ads, hear the voices from their radio or point to the image on a billboard and say: “Yeah, that person is just like me”?

Instead of the president of a university, why not show a teacher in the classroom, reaching our future leaders and expanding their minds?

Rather than a hospital CEO, why not celebrate an emergency-room nurse working double shifts, or a doctor performing lifesaving surgery?

Why a manufacturing official and not a line worker, welder or heavy-equipment operator?

In other words, why not faces that most people can relate to?

Yes, hard work does still work here.

And the bulk of that hard work is being done by bus drivers, police officers, carpenters and metal workers.

By folks pouring concrete, laying carpet, paving streets, planting trees.

Delivering babies, teaching algebra, painting walls, mowing grass.

Playing instruments, fixing cars, serving meals, digging for coal.

Washing cars, bagging groceries, cutting hair, selling clothes, mopping floors.

Making windmill blades, building Army vehicles, developing the next wave of technology.

Writing stories, taking pictures, selling advertising, running presses, delivering newspapers.

Hard work is one of our best attributes.

And the folks on the front lines are the real faces of that Johnstown-area work ethic.

They should share in the glow of the spotlight.



Chip Minemyer is the editor of The Tribune-Democrat. He can be reached at 532-5091.