You can always go home again. The question for Warren County is what, exactly, makes one want to go home again.

The “This Is Your Hometown” campaign launched recently by the Warren-Forest Higher Education Council in partnership with the Warren County Career Center Marketing Class operates on the premise that those leave high school for college or military service do so with the idea that a reminder of what’s available here is enough to bring graduates back home.

It’s not a bad idea. Reversing our population decline won’t happen in one fell swoop or one perfectly written brand campaign. It’s more realistic to think attracting people here will be the culmination of hundreds of small things like “This Is Your Hometown.” That’s the lens through which we have to look at some of these efforts.

It never hurts to remind recent high school graduates of the job openings, housing opportunities and other community news a few times a year. Hopefully that information helps a few of those graduates decide to return home to Warren County to start the next chapter of their lives. It’s not an uncommon story to hear someone leave Warren County only to come back with the benefit of hindsight to see what they’ve been missing. “This Is Your Hometown” is an attempt to make those stories a little more common.

Something else that will make those stories a little more common is opportunity. We lose graduates not because our area doesn’t offer incredible natural beauty or the type of people who make good neighbors, but because there is more opportunity elsewhere. All the outreach in the world will mean little if we don’t have opportunity to market. What sort of jobs will be enough to prompt someone who sees this marketing to move home? If it’s not going to be jobs, what opportunities to create one’s own path in Warren County can we create that is the spark for someone to come back here. It’s the question we keep asking as we talk about marketing, branding and attraction efforts. What are we marketing?

The Warren-Forest Higher Education Council effort to market the region to its graduates is a fine idea. But we have to give them something new to market.