White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

  • Home
  • King’s Commentaries
  • Random Features
  • Photos
  • Public Speaker
  • WHC Episodes
  • About WHC
  • Carrying Stations
  • ME/CFS Alert
  • Contact Us

Lackluster City? Get a Brand

February 1, 2015 by Llewellyn King 1 Comment

If your city is mostly famous for being between two other cities, if its main claim to fame is “It’s a great place to raise children,” then it’s time for your city fathers to take a course in branding.
Cities that prosper — that bring in company headquarters, tourists and where the crazy rich want be — have to have distinguished brands.
New York’s brand is glorious excess. It has the brand of ever higher, stranger skyscrapers. The world’s most successful media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, has just plunked down $57.2 million for what looks to be the world’s most lonely living space: the top four floors of a 60-story, bronze-and-glass building of a kind that is now transforming the Manhattan skyline. Take a small plot of land, build until what you get is slender tower that defies nature and looks as though its purpose is to challenge a strong wind.
Murdoch’s aerie has glass on four sides, and he can see forever, at the least until other towers rise up. If you want to spy on him, you will have to do it by drone. His own paparazzi might try to get a picture using a drone, but where would they publish it?
If you have a few million to spare you can still get in the East 23rd Street building. But those that would make an eagle jealous have gone to Murdoch. Most of us would be scared up there: a new take on “Naked and Afraid” because without neighbors, there is no need to wear clothes.
Cities in the United States that have done the branding thing right are New Orleans, jazz and food; San Francisco, cable cars and attitude; Boston, higher education and hospitals (eds and meds); and Chicago, wind and the uber-hub airport. Washington is a special case: great museums, the White House and the Capitol, and palpable delusions of importance.
The branding ace, running in front worldwide, is London. The Romans gave it a head start, but it was not until the Swinging Sixties that London became a destination for the globe. You would think that the place had enough branding with the old features: Tower Bridge, the Tower, the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace, plus the Changing of the Guard.
But no. London keeps adding dizzying new features to its brand superiority. There is the Tate Modern, an art gallery in an old power station; the London Eye, a Ferris wheel that has captured world attention and city imitators; a bridge across the Thames River that wobbles, and now a new bridge is planned with gardens and shops on it. Then there are the taxis — black boxes, that remind you where you are in case you have overlooked the big red buses.
The current mayor of London, Boris Johnson (who has branded himself as a possible prime minister) has been keen to preserve and protect the London brand by insisting on preserving the double-decker buses, distinctive taxis and other expensive city bric-a-brac, because it is a hell of an investment.
Sure Paris has the Eiffel Tower, but it is aging. Rome has the Coliseum — talk about aging. And St. Petersburg has the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. But for city branding, London is in front and pulling away, as the Brits exploit the cash value of differentness.
Providence and Baltimore are two cities of which I am particularly fond. But I would urge the city leadership in both places to get a brand, a trademark. It pays. Rides (London Eye, Eiffel Tower elevators, the San Francisco cable cars) are sure winners. Could I suggest an amphibious train across Baltimore Harbor, and the mother of all rollercoasters – big, but not scary — in Providence?
Like London and New York, these days you have got to think big in city branding, or you will miss the incredible fun and profit of a city being silly.
Frivolity pays, ask London’s Boris Johnson — and share a thought for Rupert Murdoch, stuck up in the sky. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: Boris Johnson, Coliseum, Eiffel Tower, Hermitage, King Commentary, London buses, London Eye, London taxis, Paris, Rome, Rupert Murdoch, St. Petersburg, Winter Palace

White House Chronicle on Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube
Happy Birthday, America; Now Mind How You Go

Happy Birthday, America; Now Mind How You Go

Llewellyn King

Martin Walker, the gifted former Washington correspondent of The Guardian, used to start his speeches saying that the Fourth of July wasn’t a time for sorrow for him, as it was a time when good British yeomen farmers in the colonies revolted against a German king and his German mercenaries. Walker — who now lives […]

An Electric Revolution Is Underway, but Revolutions Are Messy

An Electric Revolution Is Underway, but Revolutions Are Messy

Llewellyn King

This, the 21st century, is set to be the electric century. We are in the middle of a profound electrification binge that is going to leave its mark, an electrical mark, on every aspect of human endeavor. I believed this before I attended the Edison Electric Institute annual meeting and convention in Orlando. Now I think […]

It Is the New Age of Creativity, Despite Shortages and Runaway Inflation

It Is the New Age of Creativity, Despite Shortages and Runaway Inflation

Llewellyn King

You could be excused for believing that everything is going to hell. We are living through a tumultuous time, and the next two years are going to be especially difficult with severe disruption to supply chains, runaway inflation and, worst of all, food shortages in much of the world. But it also may be a […]

Prepare for Blackouts Across the U.S. as Summer Takes Hold

Prepare for Blackouts Across the U.S. as Summer Takes Hold

Llewellyn King

Just when it didn’t seem things couldn’t get worse — gasoline at $5 to $8 a gallon, supply shortages in everything from baby formula to new cars — comes the devastating news that many of us will endure electricity blackouts this summer. The alarm was sounded by the nonprofit North American Electric Reliability Corp. and […]

Copyright © 2022 · White House Chronicle Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in