Philly's hoagie is on a (publicity) roll

Look out, Philly cheesesteak, sandwich of celebrity acclaim. The hoagie is about to put an end to your days of hogging the limelight.

With the meat of a $12 million marketing machine, the region's tourism boosters are dishing out big helpings of publicity for the cold Philly sandwich that has gotten the cold shoulder as its blue-collar brother has become an A-list icon.

A five-week publicity blitz effectively kicks off with a hoagie-themed tailgate competition at Lincoln Financial Field before Sunday night's Eagles-Cowboys game. More events are pegged to National Sandwich Day on Thursday. (Yes, there is such a thing as National Sandwich Day. Origins: unclear.)

But the centerpiece of the campaign by the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. (GPTMC) has no expiration date: an online "hoagie finder" with maps listing 38 shops, from popular purveyors to obscure outposts.

If tourists bite, then hoagies, hoagie shops, and their host neighborhoods could become as famous as the Liberty Bell, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the neon stretch of Passyunk Avenue where Pat's and Geno's have waged a high-profile cheesesteak war for years.

"We're in good company," said Lenny Bracale, owner of Lennies Home Plate on Ridge Avenue in the city's Roxborough section, as he heard the names of hoagie shops from his native South Philadelphia that also had made the list at www.visitphilly.com/hoagies.

Though Bracale is a former college baseball catcher, it was another small hoagie guy, Dennis Fink, who turned to the baseball diamond to describe his own reaction to making it into the hoagie finder:

"It's a home run," Fink said.

Fink's, like Lennies, is not in the center of the nation's fifth-largest city. His easy-to-miss Princeton Avenue store in Tacony takes big orders every day, but seldom from tourists, because it's in a rowhouse enclave in Northeast Philadelphia.

"Tourists aren't coming to the Northeast," Fink said Thursday, as the phone rang incessantly, with orders from a hospital cancer unit and hungry locals.

The hoagie finder is the genteel result of a campaign that, if City Councilman Jim Kenney had had his way, would have been rougher around the edges, Philly-style.

"I said, 'Let's start a hoagie-cheesesteak war,' because I think the cheesesteak is overrated," said Kenney, a GPTMC board member who has an obsessive weakness for the cured meats, salami, and cheese layered artistically in any proper Italian hoagie. "I think the hoagie has a deeper and longer relationship with the city."

Kenney, 53, picked up his habit as an Irish kid in South Philadelphia, the city's unofficial hoagie mecca.

Why lavish the world with hoagie poetry and praise?

It was the joining of two civic minds - Kenney's and that of GPTMC chief executive Meryl Levitz - that led to the campaign.

Each had read an Inquirer story over the summer that wondered why the Philly hoagie had not colonized America while chains such as Quiznos had. The article found that one South Philadelphia hoagie-maker, Primo's, was embarking on a franchise strategy to spread salami-and-prosciutto passion across the Mid-Atlantic and beyond.

Levitz mentioned it to her executive staff: It's time, she said, to give the hoagie its due. The same woman, a Chicago native, championed the cheesesteak years ago with this slogan: "It was just a simple cheesesteak. But it changed my life."

Later, she brought it up with her board. By coincidence, Kenney asked Levitz if she had seen the story about Primo's.

Perhaps, Kenney said, Primo's and its migrating hoagies could serve as ambassadors for Philadelphia. Wawa had introduced hoagies to other states; now, a hoagie-only shop from one of the city's most acclaimed hoagie neighborhoods was carrying the torch across America.

Kenney waxed philosophical. "The whole board listened to his rhapsody about the hoagie," said Levitz, and how "it was the working-man's sandwich."

She added, with a slight smile, "He may have stopped just short of saying that Philadelphia was built on the hoagie."

Soon, the entire board was debating hoagie shops and favorite ways of eating hoagies. Seeded or unseeded roll? With the bread's innards scooped out or not? It went on and on.

Levitz gave her staff the go-ahead to create a campaign.

Less than three months later, they are unleashing a national promotion through Facebook contests, Twitter shout-outs, the hoagie finder, and an amateur hoagie-making competition in which Kenney and other judges will crown a champion at the Shops at Liberty Place on Thursday in honor of National Sandwich Day. (Primo's and others have joined as partners.)

By any measure, the list of shops on the hoagie finder is an incomplete one, sure to inflame the passions of those left out. The sites were chosen by GPTMC on the recommendations of a freelance food writer. Criteria were a bit squishy.

The agency is open to adding more. "Let us know," Levitz said. "We'll put you on."

As GPTMC staffers worked out the final kinks for the multifaceted hoagie lovefest, it was business as usual at Fink's and Lennies, where pickles, onions, olive oil, and bread deliveries needed constant attention.

On a cork board at Fink's hung a sign irreverently touting the virtues of lunch meat: My ancestors didn't fight their way to the top of the food chain so I could be a vegetarian.

 Fink, 63, had received a call from GPTMC about the campaign but had been too busy to process it. He gets to his store at 6 every morning to prep for a 10 a.m. opening. That's one reason why he welcomes the attention. His marketing currently consists of paper menus that serve as flyers, plus word-of-mouth.

Bracale, 40, had no idea Lennies had been selected when he was approached for an interview Thursday. Like Fink, he was thankful for the publicity. Lennies competes on Ridge against a Wawa, a Primo's, and a Subway.

His marketing budget? "It needs to be improved," he said.

It is no small irony that, after a decade in Roxborough, Lennies even added cheesesteaks to the menu a couple of months ago. "Just to compete," he said, almost apologetically. "You have to compete."

But he agrees the hoagie has gotten the image-making shaft.

"With an Italian hoagie, there's an abundance of different flavors that you can taste," Bracale said. "With a cheesesteak, what do you taste? A bunch of cheese. All you're doing is eating a grilled-cheese sandwich with a couple pieces of meat on it.

"I'm a hoagie guy," he proclaimed. "It's different."

Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corp. is giving the city's best-known cold sandwich the royal treatment over the next month. There's a Tailgate Takeover contest Sunday for the Eagles-Cowboys game at Lincoln Financial Field, an amateur hoagie-making competition at the Shops at Liberty Place on Thursday in honor of National Sandwich Day, and more.

Find a guide to 38 hoagie-makers in Southeastern Pennsylvania at http://is.gd/hfFmlE.

To join several hoagie contests - including one that includes a free hotel stay in Philadelphia - hook into www.facebook.com/visitphilly. Or hop onto Twitter and follow @uwishunu or @visitphilly.

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