To my surprise, I found this weeks readings pretty interesting. Branding NY in general was such an interesting concept to me. It was great reading about the “I Love NY” plan of the 70s, if only because it is still around today. Any person who has been to NY can tell you about the plethora of products adorned with the famous logo. It’s gotten so famous in fact, that other people have started to copy (or pay homage) to it. This, along with the new Times Square is an example of classic rebranding of a city. It changes the way the public looks at the city in order to draw in more tourism and just generally give the city a better name.
What I found perhaps more interesting was Bloomberg’s strategy of rebranding. While he did care about tourists, what he thought was important was keeping industry in New York. Originally, the only way to keep companies in New York was to offer tax incentives. This was not very helpful and cost the city money. Bloomberg finally tackled it from a marketing perspective. By making the city seem luxurious, upper class, and most of all influential, companies couldn’t help but to want to have their offices there. Presenting New York as the perfect place for business image wise, resource wise, and employee wise, brought in new companies as well as keeping the old ones around. Creating new districts in outer boroughs to compete with New Jersey was also a genius idea. While you may not be able to afford the glamour of a Manhattan office, an office in Brooklyn will cost you the same as moving to New Jersey, while still being part of NYC, and hopefully the resource pool available there.
I’m taking a marketing class this semester, and I couldn’t help but admire Bloomberg’s work. There are four major Ps in marketing: Product, Price, Promotion, and Place. While place (distribution channels) doesn’t really play a role in this type of marketing, Bloomberg made a big decision. He chose to entirely ignore price, and put a lot of work into the product and promotion. This is typically the strategy used for a luxury good, specifically at the beginning of it’s lifecycle, when trendsetters are the people purchasing. I think that is clearly what Bloomberg was going for. He wanted New York to be a luxury city that was home to the best and brightest, the trendsetters of the business world.
