Branding a city

Brian Lehrer had a fascinating piece today on how the public sector took on a private sector strategy to save New York during the 1970’s. The city invested in Branding. Faced with a failing economy, rising crimes rates and a bad reputation New York officials created the iconic campaign “I Love NY”.

My main takeaway from the piece was the comment Miriam Greenberg made about branding. She said that branding is a combination of both marketing and material, that you need more than just a great message. I completely agree.

There’s a lot of discussion about what companies and governments should invest in during these times. There’s healthcare, or education, or infrastructure. If anyone said branding, I bet the suggestion was widely dismissed.  But if you take Ms. Greenberg’s use of the term, its really not such a bad idea.  Branding helps people identify with products and if anything needs support of the people right now, its the economy. Its our cities and local businesses.  Its going to be the new products.

So for every project that we are launching, stimulus or not, lets make sure we put a solid branding effort into it too.

A lesson for the public and private sector alike.

Quick - Post
Fast Company’s piece on Marine Energy is a good introduction to an area that’s often overlooked in our search for renewable energy.

Check it out here http://tinyurl.com/b9v4y4

There’s a lot of talk about how entrepreneurs can save the day.

Who will get us out of this economic mess? Entrepreneurs.

Who is going to lead us towards clean energy? Entrepreneurs.

Who is going to save the New York Times from Rupert Murdoch? Entrepreneurs?

There is an enormous amount of truth to this idea, but its a bit incomplete. Sramana Mitra recently posted an article for Forbes as part of a running series that is exploring a variety of topics related to the economy and entrepreneurs. One article in particular, Barriers to Innovation, reminded me something that I think a lot of people need to bear in mind: We cannot rely on entrepreneurs alone. We need to value the solid research and technical skills that come from academia, science and engineering. Its when they intersect that real value is generated. Read the rest of this entry »