Retrospection/Patti Boccassini-Hill
The Coveted Simply the Best Award Story By Patti Boccassini-Hill
How it All Started What could we come up with that would tout the new Harrisburg Magazine, as well as be a great marketing campaign for local businesses? It was the year 1997, during an inbound plane ride from a City/Regional Magazine Association (CRMA) Publishers’ convention in Minneapolis, MN, that “Simply the Best” was born. The very first Simply the Best awards party was held in September of that year, upstairs at the Appalachian Brewing Company pub on Cameron Street, Harrisburg, with nearly 200 people in attendance. We were thrilled. We gave out small, inexpensive acrylic star statues with their name engraved on them along with their category. The following year, the event was held with almost 350 people. The annual event increasingly grew, and on 9/9/99 the party was held at the new Whitaker Center for the Science and the Arts. Still growing in attendance, in 2000 we moved to the Hilton downtown, with the awards ceremony being held outside on the patio and the ballroom turned into dancing to the beat of the fabulous and eclectic Big Tubba Mista. Quickly realizing this marketing idea was becoming big, we trademarked the Simply the Best logo. Sure enough, as the years followed, other local publications started having “best of” issues. The gala was gaining recognition as the “party of the year” for Central PA, and, with the help of the JDK Group, it was kicked up a notch. The ballroom at the Radisson Penn Harris was decked out like no other venue. In 2001, Mike Miller of Mixed-up Productions was raised up in the air above the dance floor to the theme from 2001: A Space
Odyssey. Each year grew to be bigger and better. By 2013, we had to turn people away, as the limit in the ballroom was 800 people. Half-time shows showcased models dressed in flower bikinis; the Garden of the Good and Evil décor; Japanese Gardens with dancers, just to name a few. And the food – over 18 local restaurants who either won Simply the Best or Readers’ Choice honors provided amazing cuisine from which to choose. This wasn’t a typical awards show. In the beginning, the ballots, which were in the first three issues of the year, were counted by hand. By the fifth year we realized it was just too much to handle, and ballots were put online, tallied, and verified. What started out with approximately 25 categories such as best power lunch, best hot dog, best martini, best steak, best hospital, best hotel and so on, has grown into the most successful marketing campaign for both the magazine and the winners. Over the years the event became a fund raiser with silent auctions as well as a portion of the proceeds from advertising dollars benefitting different nonprofit organizations. Giving back to the community was deep in our hearts. Who knows, those original acrylic star awards from 25 years ago may be worth some money someday. Congratulations to all the winners. You make this community thrive. 7 Patti Boccassini-Hill was the former Publisher and Editor-in-chief of Harrisburg Magazine. Patti semi-retired in 2014, and now works part time at Triscari Video|Web| Marketing in Camp Hill, PA as a project manager, and contributing writer for PA State Association of Boroughs’ magazine, The Borough News.
Introspection
“The goal is not to be better than the other man, but your previous self.” — The Dalai Lama
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his month marks one year since I came on board as Managing Editor. Though my name was in the masthead for the 2021 August issue, I wouldn’t actually begin writing content for the magazine until September. To quote myself (how often does anyone get to do that!) from my very first Introspection, I said back then that I was “determined to have a blast as Editor, by helping our readers have one, too.” It would be an understatement to say it truly has been a blast guiding our editorial content for the past 12 months – and I can safely say it’s 4 HARRISBURG MAGAZINE AUGUST 2022
been one of the best 12 months of my career. And, ironically, seeing as how I first moved to Harrisburg 25 years ago, I feel a strange kinship with the magazine’s annual Simply the Best, which also is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month. Therefore, being able to witness first-hand the behind-the-scenes process of the building and promoting, the tabulating and publishing of our biggest project of the year, has been both humbling and enthralling. What have I learned from being one of the many cogs in the Simply
