“Position Vermont as a lifestyle brand.” ​
–2016 Consultant Report on Attracting and Retaining Residents and Businesses to the State of Vermont, pg. 131
In 2015, UVM’s current Chief Communications & Marketing Officer, Alessandro “Alex” Bertoni, was interviewed to celebrate his new role as Director of Marketing and Communications at St. Michael’s College. “Articulating what is distinctive about the institution to the right audience and having that be memorable is not easy in today’s ad-saturated society,” he says, as the article notes his skill for using data-driven strategies to “successfully define and differentiate institutions.”
Bertoni’s focus on defining communities through contrast rather than consensus is hallmark of the granola tradition—but his tenure as Interim Chief CMO only began last November. What could have led to Bertoni, with his differentiation approach, being brought in rather than a generalist focused on broadening appeal?
There’s an answer, and to get it we have to roll back nearly a decade.
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Montpelier, May 16th, 2016—a collaborative report by the global marketing agency Development Counselors International and the state-based Spike Advertising is submitted to Vermont’s Agency of Commerce and Community Development (ACCD). This report, titled “Telling the Vermont Story as a Great Place to Work, Live and Do Business: A 3-Year Economic Development Marketing Plan to Attract and Retain Residents and Businesses to Vermont,” had been commissioned by ACCD last fall with a straightforward purpose: give Vermont a plan to keep and attract residents and businesses.
This 170-page plan did much more than promote Vermont’s natural beauty. With Spike providing the “inside” read and DCI the national strategy (pg. 3), the report brought to the state argued that Vermont shouldn’t sell itself as a state—it should sell a lifestyle.​​​
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Here’s the counterintuitive truth about the report’s strategy to attract residents: it isn’t about reaching out to new populations at all. The prescription of the report wasn’t to broaden the Vermont’s desirability—it was to target the narrow demographic who already fit the mold. ​The “sweet spot,” the consultants wrote, are people possessing what they called a “Drop of Vermont” in them—individuals who “grew up or lived in the state, went to college or camp in Vermont, or vacationed here” (pg. 12).​​​​​
Page 87 of the DCI/Spike report views college students as an opportunity to “educate internal and external audiences” to implement their prescribed strategy of framing Vermont as a unique lifestyle destination. UVM’s Billings Library is pictured on the slide. Among those interviewed by the consultants were senior UVM leadership, namely Dr. John Evans, Senior Advisor to the President, and Provost David Rosowsky.
When planners targeted “young professionals” (pg. 3) for recruitment and polling, they weren’t casting a wide net. They were fishing in a very particular pond: 92% of their target demographic held bachelor’s degrees or higher, a credential threshold that automatically excludes two-thirds of American workers (pg. 92). ​Consider what these highly educated prospects thought when they heard “Vermont.” Their associations read like a lifestyle magazine’s table of contents: “beautiful,” “nature,” “green,” “peaceful,” “laid back,” and “friendly” (pg. 92).
But here’s where it gets interesting—these same respondents also understood Vermont’s structural barriers with remarkable clarity. They described the state as “remote,” “cold,” “small,” and plagued by “lack of work” (pg. 13). They weren’t naive about what Vermont offered and where it fell short.​
​But the unintentional innovation of the consultants' target demographic is that it turned Vermont’s drawbacks into sorting mechanisms.
Vermont ranks “below average” on the very factors that matter to diverse, working-class, and urban-focused populations—“alternative job opportunities for yourself,” “job opportunities for your spouse/partner,” “proximity to extended family,” and “active social scene/nightlife” (pg. 92). In this frame, Vermont’s weaknesses aren’t liabilities; they’re screens. Each one filters out people who can’t trade mobility for scenery, who work in unskilled labor, who rely on family networks or cultural connections, or who value urban life. Even the state’s recommended social media strategy used hashtags like #VermontLife and #vtlife, reinforcing a narrow conception of belonging centered on an aesthetic portrayal of “life.”
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The ACCD was specifically urged to “target the business community” by creating “messaging that will elevate Vermont’s profile as a good place to grow businesses” to quell concerns of out-of-state corporate executives (pg. 14)—and when the sorting mechanisms had done their work, the people who came out on the other side were deliberate intended to come from a narrow slice: a niche, high-income audience whose resources, preferences, and cultural identity would help to grow “existing Vermont businesses, new Vermont businesses, and Vermont’s workforce” (pg. 4) without hard questions about structural fixes.
How, fundamentally, did the plan direct Vermont government to go about cultivating their state? “Market what is ‘right’ about Vermont now and not get hamstrung by what is ‘wrong’—leaving those issues for the state to tackle over the longer term.” (pg. 14). The state sells the Vermont it already has, looks for the people who already fit, and the circle closes on itself. The pitch pulls in the affluent and culturally aligned while impelling everyone else not to bother.
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​​​Vermont’s “outreach” isn’t outreach at all—it’s a bid for growth without change. ​​​​UVM’s leadership did not create this model, and perhaps did not even adopt it intentionally, but they didn’t need to. It’s the established default, and they run with it faithfully and unquestioningly.
That “they” is UVM’s Division of Strategic Communications, headed by the very same Alessandro Bertoni interviewed at the very start. And now we can answer why he, of all people, was tapped for the role. Bertoni didn’t need to study Vermont’s economic development strategy to understand how it worked—he was hired because his differentiation approach is the water Vermont swims in.
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​The consultants who designed Vermont’s economic development strategy in 2016 understood something profound about the power of elegant exclusion. They realized you don’t need to explicitly keep people out if you can make them opt themselves out. You just need to describe your community in terms that resonate with exactly the people you want, and everyone else will hear the message loud and clear.
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UVM didn’t invent this approach. We just inherited it, polished it, and made it our own. And today, Bertoni’s division operates as the university’s most sophisticated implementation of Vermont’s original sorting algorithm—one that transforms structural barriers into brand assets, and turns economic development into demographic curation.
The outcome of this marketing strategy is campus culture called granola: wholesome on the surface, crunchy when you bite down, and expensive enough that only certain people can afford to buy it.
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