Leaving the picket fence behind
In Dan Goldstein’s mind, each of these individual issues could be grouped under a campaign that sought to “position the city as a place of family-life support, so you know all the things you think you get in the suburbs, you can actually get in the city.” The convenience and opportunities offered by the city could allow advertisers to “paint a picture of a more dynamic and fulfilled family life.” (See bottom box on differing views of whether a campaign should include what some see as negatives of suburban living.)
Anchoring a campaign in reality
Goldstein cautioned that the ideas that work best in advertising are the ones that are ring true. Advertisers reach consumers, he said “when we articulate something which is felt by the heart,” and, at the same time, “it is understood by the head.”
Many issues facing urban places in the United States, especially disparities in the quality of public education, cannot be dreamt away. Shyam Kannan, the principal-director of the economic development practice group at RCLCO, a real estate advisory firm, said, “There is no doubt in my mind that if urban school districts weren’t terribly mismanaged and poorly performing, you wouldn’t have to have an advocacy group for smart growth, because you wouldn’t be fighting such a very, very important, but very, very weak spot in existing smart growth neighborhoods…And unfortunately it is one that politics makes it very, very difficult to solve.”
Kannan hopes it is possible to “find a way to bring the county and municipal education providers into these discussions about creating walkable communities so that we can find some way to put the might…and the wealth of the real estate industry behind the very real need to have better performing schools.” As it stands right now, however, Kannan noted that, though “we fund the schools through real estate taxes, [and] housing values are tied to school quality…educators are not at our real estate conferences.”
“If we think about cities as being in the business of attracting and obtaining households,” Kannan continued, unless they wrestle with education, cities will not be operating a sustainable business model because they will not be able to “keep [residents] there once they decide to marry and have children.”
And in the meantime?
Nevertheless, not all demographic groups would be equally concerned about schools. Dan Levitan said that when marketing a development, or region, “you look at the underlying physical, social, economic constraints of the property,” and “that’s one of the factors in determining…who you market to.” From his experience in his Florida-based business, he said that in areas with poor schools he tended to market to empty-nesters and snow birds, “because you are pushing rope uphill” in marketing primarily to families.
Sandy Thompson, the global planning director at Y&R (formerly Young & Rubicam), concurred, suggesting in a discussion with Remapping Debate that “Millennials” (the generation now between the ages of about 20 and 35) and empty-nesters might be the easiest to pull into a more urban environment, in part because they do not have children. Millennials, she suggested, are at a point in their lives where, “They are not looking long term, they are not looking to say can I live in the city for the next twenty years…they are looking to say what can I do today.”
Likewise, empty-nesters could be drawn to the city because they are at a point in their lives, Thompson said, where they can have “new experiences and begin a new journey in” life as opposed to continuing a stale status quo. In some ways, she pointed out, those two groups might be looking for similar things: energy, diversity of experience, and the hope that “no two days are the same.”
Going negative on the suburbs?
Matt Herrmann of BBDO San Francisco pointed out that the “darker side of advertising” is the “fact that people remember negative messages more than they do positive messages,” and suggested that part of a campaign could be built around “people who moved to the suburbs and regret it.”
By contrast, Sandy Thompson of Y&R argued, “You can’t build a brand on a negative.” She suggested that in an advertising campaign, “What you don’t want people to do is start comparing…this location to that location. What you want them to do is to fall in love with your location.”
Potential positive messages Thompson described include, “Wake up three blocks from work” and “sleep in every day.” Focusing too strongly on the negatives associated with suburban life — in this case the commute — does “not [help] sell your location. It’s only helping de-sell the competition.”
EYA, a developer that builds condos and townhomes in the Washington, D.C. area that are located near shops and public transit, is already practicing what Thompson preaches. Its central slogan, featured on its website, is “life within walking distance.”