Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Looking for Creativity in Detroit
Posted by Mary Cashiola on Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 12:32 PM
I've written about TIME magazine's year-long Detroit project in this space before, but a friend recently tipped me to this NYT's story about a contest to make Detroit seem cool.
(I'm paraphrasing, of course.)
From the story:
"It may not be the advertising version of 'Mission: Impossible,' but it is certainly a challenging, if not daunting, task: produce a campaign to encourage young and creative people to consider Detroit as a place to live and work.
Cue the Lalo Schifrin theme music.
The effort, called Selling Detroit, is upfront about its intent. 'America’s most struggling city needs to attract business and talent,' a description of the contest begins."
Five advertising agencies in Detroit agreed to take part, and TIME donated all of the ads to the city of Detroit.
The entries are after the jump:
The first three entries:
The second two (sorry about the formatting; I did this quick and dirty):
I know people freak out if I even mention that Memphis shares some of Detroit's problems (though generally to a lesser degree. Calm down, internets), but the copy on this one in particular reminds me of Memphis.
Comments (3)
Showing 1-3 of 3
I don't mind the comparison. We too are an open canvass. Many things have started here, we have a proud heritage. Our biggest resource is our people, and we need to make an imprint with our creatives, mortar, and hard work. A vision brought to the city and implemented by it's citizens. You see how quickly government is beautifying the riverfront? And the budget? Let's turn to each other and make this city proud--it's our city! We need to Love it!
like
dislike
You are absolutely right. Memphis shares many of the same problems as Memphis. It is incredibly frustrating though to think the effects of macro economic policies can somehow be mitigated or reversed through marketing. So these 5 advertising agencies are going to team up to try and draw creative people into Detroit and that will easy the problems of city. What happens when that fails. It will fail because it doesn't address those macro economic policies. It really isn't a big secret on how you get a society with social mobility, economic opprotunity, & low levels of inequality. The problem is, who wants to challenge entrenched interests. Richard Florida's philosphy/ideology at it's base is an embrace of a plutocratic system. (He taught at Carnegie Melon for Christsakes!) We live in a system (knowledge economy) geared to concentrate benefits for a narrow cross section of society. The foot solidiers for this are these 24 to 34 year old creatives. But what about the vast amounts of people who aren't these 24 to 34 year old creatives or corporate executives. Trickle down economics?
I read an interesting article about how the elites of China and the US have partnered for their own benefit at the cost of their respective societies. It makes you stop and think what have our societies become.
http://www.chinahush.com/2009/12/14/the-di…
I know I keep slamming this creative class stuff/knowledge economy. This isn't a new phenomenon. Societies have de-industrialized before and the outcomes follow the same basic trends we are on now. Richard Florida will not save you.
Kevin Phillips may.
At the core of our problems is the mentality of 'what's in it for me." This mentality permeates our society at all levels. We must live our lives with a new mentality that replaces our broken greed-driven system. Our new economy will be born out of a mentality that is characterized by a society that " lives for the advantage of others." Let's integrate that value into the DNA of our society and then we will inoculate ourselves against a natural degenerative cycle that is killing future opportunities for the next generation.
The potential of the creative class will only be truly realized if they combine their efforts and use their profits and ideas to provide more opportunities for the communities they serve. To be truly successful they must engage the disadvantaged which is what makes them "creative" right?
Collaboration is our future: 20 years ago in biological research ( where I work), a scientist could carry out most of their research in the lab they worked in. Now one research idea requires intense collaboration often drawing expertise from 3-5 different research institutions. Unlike business entrepreneurs who are faced with raising their own capital, scientists use grants ( NOT LOANS), from the government to explore our ideas and hypothesis. We get money because it's understood we work for the betterment of our society.
The reality is that today we need collective entrepreneurship with the same type of resources that makes research possible. We need social entrepreneurs ( community scientists?) that create wealth for their communities and not for the venture capitalists and themselves. If our National institute of Health can underwrite almost all our research funds on a 25 billion dollar budget they can certainly consider fund local community entrepreneur organizations with the understanding that grant money is used to create more economic opportunity for the community. After all we just threw 700 billion at banks. Bypass the banks and directly fund the people creating the jobs with GRANTS not loans. Both scientists and entrepreneurs fail frequently so why would one be subject to bankruptcy while the other simply explores another hypothesis? How many ideas may have actually succeeded had the proper support system been in place to reduce the capital burn-rate and the learning curve?
The good news is Memphis already has a lot of people that are living and working with this new mentality -people that love Memphis. I have great hope for our city.
THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
SPECIAL ISSUES
