Not even my hometown can pull that off and get away with it, so why would Cincinnati think it could? New York City, where I’m originally from, is indelibly New York, NY. It doesn’t matter how much NYC sneers at the rest of the state (and it sneers oh, so hard), that’s where it is and everyone knows it.

In fact, that city-state feeling is common among major cities. My adopted city of Chicago, the San Francisco Bay Area, even some smaller cities like Portland, Oregon, maintain that rarified, aloof air that they are somehow above the states they were born from.

None of them, however, would dare to reject even saying the names of those sates. Cincinnati just doesn’t get away with pulling it, either. The only thing the monicker “CincinnatiUSA” makes someone unfamiliar with Cincinnati think, is, “What happened to Ohio?”

Any brand that elicits confusion like that is a pretty wrong-headed brand. More like an anti-brand, one that says, “Look how much we don’t get it.” That’s a shame for the Queen City, because you guys aren’t supposed to be marketing, in a vacuum, to yourselves.

Living only 45 minutes north here in Dayton one feels more a part of Ohio…or more a part of Appalachia since there are so many moutain folk (& their descendents) living here. We sometimes joke that Dayton is the northernmost city in Kentucky.

Cincinnati, though, is sort of an island on the land.