It’s never an easy decision. To compete with the big boys, it is tempting to create an aura of vastness. But we also feel a bit tawdry when we do so.

We all know there are some clients who measure your capability against how many staffpeople you can supply the job. They like to see a battery of managers and minions scurrying around on their account, regardless of whether the army actually produces an attack. We soloists can feel a little inadequate when pursuing this type of client. Hence the use of “we” in our marketing efforts. We figure that one little word will put a veneer of respectability on our micro operation. Nothing illegal or unethical about it per se, so why not give ourselves some subtle professional enhancement therapy?

But of course, like the facades of a movie-set frontier town, your true identity will sooner or later become apparent when a client takes the time to poke around. At that point, you can bet your stock falls considerably. Either the client calls and you have a lot of ’splaining to do, or, more likely, the client ends the conversation before it even begins. In this case, the editorial “we” closes the very doors you thought it would open.

The Royal "We" -- Yaeger Communications

On the other hand, using first-person references in our marketing can feel so, well, pathetic.We’re worried about the questions. Is this a gig to supplement your unemployment benefits? Do you wear slippers in your bedroom office? What’s your real job? You’d like to be honest — after all, you’re a brilliant professional with skills that add significant value — but using “me” instead of “we” makes you feel like you’re running a lemonade stand rather than a bona fide business.

When you’re stuck at the crossroads of “we” and “me,” it’s a good time to step back and assess your target audience. There are many instances in which clients actually prefer the services of a soloist over a cast of thousands. Soloists typically offer flexibility and value, perfect characteristics for small, tactical jobs that supplement a client’s in-house capabilities. These assignments are usually plentiful when the economic pendulum swings to the extremes. When clients are either overrun with work or have just laid off staff, outside freelance help is always desirable. In this case, using “me” instead of “we” is definitely a marketing advantage.

If you’re anything like me, though, you want it both ways. There are times when in fact I’m bidding on some pretty big accounts and need the “we” to enter the game. I also do a lot of short-assignment work that requires the more personable “me.” At one point in my career, I addressed this dilemma by creating two personas and two campaigns. When marketing my strategic planning and branding services to larger clients, I went by “Yaeger Communications” and employed the royal “we” in my literature. When marketing my freelance writing services to graphic designers and smaller companies, I went by “Dan Yaeger, Wordsmith” and used the more humble “me” in a separate set of marketing materials.

The More Humble "Me" -- Dan Yaeger, Wordsmith

For a while this worked, but I started feeling something like a bigamist raising a couple of separate families. It’s a lot of effort to keep two personal brands going without confusing potential clients — and yourself.

Today, I feel much more comfortable in my skin, professionally, by using both the “me” and the “we” in my marketing. I am upfront in stating that “I am proud to be an independent professional” and let potential clients know all the benefits this entails, from personalized service to value for the dollar. But I have solved the “we” dilemma by stating that I bring to the table a talented, dynamic network of other independent professionals that I’ve cultivated over the course of 20 years in business. These folks compliment my own skills and, by miraculous gestalt, help me create an über-team of gurus in our respective fields. The “we” is the team I assemble for each client project, based on needs, outlook, and budget.

This method has cured my professional schizophrenia. Now to work on the rest of my life…

The Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation is organizing a series of new product showcases called “Mass Innovation Nights.” Mass Innovation Nights (MIN) is designed to provide Massachusetts-based innovators with ways (both online and in the real world) to connect with the media, the marketplace and each other. The events are free to all and open to the public. The first one is Wednesday, April 8, 2009. For more information visit http://massinnovationnights.com/.

Callahan’s Vision

The Route 128 story begins with the vision of William F. Callahan, who was appointed Massachusetts Department of Public Works Commissioner in 1934. As more and more families owned automobiles, he realized, Boston traffic routes were becoming increasingly choked. Something had to be done to relieve the pressure of daily gridlock on city streets.

Callahan envisioned what he termed a “circumferential highway,” a high-speed, limited-access roadway connecting the roads that formed the “spokes” leading into Boston’s “hub.” As early as 1912, there had been talk of creating such a route, and during the 1920s highway planners identified a State Route 128 that meandered along city streets in a jagged arc around Boston.

But Callahan’s vision was much bolder, grander, and modern. Cloverleaves were to provide smooth access. Overpasses were to have stone facings, each one unique, in the style of a parkway. Rest areas were designed to fuel both car and driver. A mass transit line was envisioned for the median, while bicycle paths and hiking trails were slated for landscaped buffers along the shoulders.

Roadblocks

To keep costs low, Callahan planned the new route through farms and wetlands, avoiding expensive land taking through town centers. While this minimized local opposition to the highway, it also fueled critics’ contention that 128 was a “road to nowhere.” Ironically, the highway that was to generate explosive regional economic growth was originally opposed by business leaders, realtors, and even the American Automobile Association.

Undaunted, Callahan and his crews broke ground on the first two sections of his beltway in 1936: one northeast of Boston in the Lynnfield-Peabody-Danvers area and one southeastern stretch in Dedham-Westwood. The Federal Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Roosevelt New Deal program, provided funds for the project, which employed thousands of men in eastern Massachusetts. Callahan wanted six lanes, but the Federal Bureau of Public Roads decided that four lanes would be sufficient for the foreseeable future.

In 1939, political tremors put a bump in the road when newly-elected Republican Governor Leverett Saltonstall ousted Callahan, a prominent Democrat, from his highway post. The onset of World War II ground construction to a halt altogether. For nine years the project languished, until in 1948 the Democrats once again captured the corner office and Callahan was reappointed to his post.

Vision Completed

Callahan moved quickly to put Route 128, now christened the “Yankee Division Highway” in honor of area combat veterans, in the fast lane. By 1951, he oversaw completion of the 22.5 mile stretch between Wellesley and Lynnfield. In 1953 the highway extended from Danvers to Gloucester. The Wellesley-Dedham section was completed in 1955, and final pieces were put in place by 1959. Total cost of the project was $63 million.

But by then, William F. Callahan had moved on to another visionary highway project. In 1955 he became the first chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.

Yaeger Communications has been working with organizations in Waltham, Massachusetts, for quite some time. One of the most impressive aspects of the city is its incredible restaurant scene — more than 100 establishments featuring an array of ethnicities (reflecting its past as a factory town) and cuisines, from basic all-American fare to terrific fine dining.

So, taking inspiration from this “melting pot” of good taste, we published a cookbook called “Local Flavor: Waltham.” The book features more than 200 recipes from over 70 Waltham restaurants and home chefs.

Dishes include cuisine from a smorgasbord of cultures such as Italy, Greece, Germany, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, the Caribbean, Ireland, and the United States. Several community groups are well represented in the cookbook. Members of the Waltham Fields Community Farm contributed a number of vegetarian and health-conscious recipes, and the Reagle Players, a local acting company, supplied several Broadway-inspired entries.

In addition to recipes, the cookbook features an essay on Waltham’s culinary heritage, a timeline of Waltham restaurants, and anecdotes about the community’s dining traditions. Historical photos from the Waltham Historical Society, Waltham Public Library, and Waltham Museum provide interesting and sometimes humorous illustration throughout the book.

Local Flavor: Waltham is being distributed principally as a fundraising vehicle for Waltham’s non-profit organizations, which will benefit from proceeds of book sales to their constituencies. Several groups, including the Public Library, Gore Place, Waltham Museum, Historical Society, Community Farm, Partnership for Youth, Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation, and More Than Words teen bookstore are participating.

For a sample PDF of the book’s introduction and some recipes, click here: lfw-sample-pdf

For more information or to order a copy, go to www.walthamcookbook.org.

Build It and They Will Come

Prior to the completion of Route 128 some 50 years ago, life was quite a bit different in the communities that the highway would connect. Many were small villages with rural ways — family farms dotted the landscape from Gloucester to Quincy. Some, such as Waltham, were bustling, self-sufficient urban centers with their own industries, shopping, and entertainment. No one often traveled far. A trip to Boston was a relatively major undertaking, and a trip from, say, Waltham to Gloucester, was a plague of back roads and city streets.

That all changed when Route 128 was built. Now, motorists could zip up to Cape Ann for a day trip, or visit their relatives in Dedham without their fresh-baked pie getting cold. But in those early days, critics dubbed Route 128 the “Road to Nowhere” because it failed to connect anything more than farmland. It was America’s first beltway, but some were not so sure it needed one.

The Boom is On

That attitude didn’t last long. Shortly after the western stretch of highway was completed in 1951, Edwin Land of Polaroid drove out Route 2 from his offices in Cambridge looking to site a manufacturing facility for instant camera film. When he came to Route 128, he instantly recognized that the new road was a perfect backdrop for his ambitions - easy access from Cambridge and just about anywhere. He closed a deal on a local pig farm, and the rest is history.

Polaroid SX-70, c. 1972

Land was not long a loner on 128. Soon the highway became a magnet for development, with technology firms leading the demand for industrial space, housing, and local services. Suddenly the sleepy towns were bursting at the seams, enjoying economic growth but imperiling their former way of life. The highway was designed to accommodate 15,000 cars per day. By the time the last segment was completed in 1958, there were days when 50,000 cars traveled its lanes. Between 1951 and 1959, 227 businesses employing 28,000 people located along Route 128, and many others moved nearby.

Lifestyle Changes

As a byproduct, Route 128 changed the way we lived and worked. Subdivisions were a new phenomenon with Levittown in New York, and the Boston area became an eager consumer of the idea. In Beverly, the North Shore Shopping Center became the first such facility east of California, and only the second in the country. Quincy-based Howard Johnson’s expanded its restaurant chain along Route 128 and nationwide. Workers now commuted to their jobs in cars, frequently to a new type of workplace, the office or industrial park. The things we know today as suburban sprawl were then new and exciting.

And if Route 128 were a ripple from the technology pebble first tossed in Boston, by 1958 planners decided that yet another ripple, Interstate 495, was required to handle the region’s growing needs.

Excerpted from an exhibition of the same name that I wrote for the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation, Waltham, MA

Yet, roads can also be much more. Some are picturesque byways or avenues of nostalgia, such as the Mohawk Trail and Old Route 1. Politicians name some roads after military heroes or mountain ranges, and when they run out of those, they sometimes lend their own names to particularly scenic stretches.

Then there are the roads that serve an even higher purpose. They are the highways of history, those rare roadways whose very construction changed not the way we drove so much as the way we lived. And although like any ordinary road they can still frustrate with traffic jams and fool drivers, these roads transcend our petty annoyances because they have made us who we are.

Route 128 is such a road.

Within its 70-mile embrace rest the hopes, dreams, and dreads of Boston, and many of the world as well. Its creation in the 1950s through New England farmland marked a border not just between urban and rural. Route 128 was a frontier that separated the old and new. America’s first beltway highway delivered a fast lane of change and gave us much of what we know today: subdivisions, shopping malls, office parks, suburban sprawl.

And then there were those widgets of Route 128. By a marvelous coincidence of geography and good fortune, the highway born of wide open spaces gave birth to wide open ideas. These, in turn, produced grand companies with science-fiction names, introduced the term “high tech,” and, most important, prepared our global economy with exciting inventions of a new age.

Reinvention: the Region’s Competitive Advantage

The Route 128 region is different from many of the country’s other leading regions in one very significant way – its history.

When commentators declared the area’s high-tech boom of the 1980s to be the “Massachusetts Miracle,” it was really just the latest in a series of miracles. Since permanent European settlement began in the 1600s, the area has grown prosperous on the successful application of money, manpower, and knowledge.

The list of pioneering industries that have emanated from the Boston area is staggering: iron making, whaling, fishing, automobiles, bicycles, foreign trade, shoes, precision manufacturing, financial services, and many more. America’s first textile factory began in 1814 where you are standing. Waltham also launched the country to prominence with the mass production of watches in the 1850s.

Each of these enterprises is historically interrelated. Engineers and skilled laborers migrated from one to the other, cross-pollinating better ways of manufacturing. Capitalists invested broadly, using profits from foreign trade to launch the textile industry. And as formal education gained importance, the area’s proximity to institutions such as Harvard and MIT became a common ingredient to success.

In other words, the area’s most recent rise to prominence in the last half-century continues a tradition that began with the earliest settlers. As new opportunities arise, the region reinvents itself with alacrity. Usually, that reinvention spells success, at least until the next greatest thing comes along.

Excerpted from an exhibition of the same name that I wrote for the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation, Waltham, MA