Sheer Perfection

Driving through the local landscape dominated by election signs from almost every candidate for local office, I pause and think on how truly spectacularly lucky I am to live in this community given the spate of candidates.

As I think back on the past editorials (here, here among a few of many) and the endless airwave and coffee chatter on the futility of marketing Amsterdam given its endless list of faults, I can confidently conclude that the lack of criticism of the candidates’ marketing from these very same corners means the candidates are, without fail, sheer perfection.

How could it be otherwise: is not marketing without showing the negatives hoodwinking? Is it not dishonest and deceptive? Should not the signs or ads have some disclaimer, like medical products, that this candidate may create side effects, sometimes fatal? Or at least, may make you prone to emotional outbursts or nervous twitching once they take office? Plus aren’t the fliers and signs kind of ‘snazzy’ and the portraits of the candidates and their families rather idealized? Why not an honest ad of a candidate with his family during one of their lesser moments– isn’t that a bit more ‘honest’?

I doubt you will see any criticism of marketing by candidates vis-a-vis ‘truth in advertising’ from any media source for the simple reason in this story, the salient portion:

Thus began what would be a banner year in campaign spending. Candidates, the political parties, and outside groups spent $4 billion on the 2010 congressional elections, more than had been spent in any previous midterm election cycle. The year also featured a crop of high-profile, wealthy candidates, including the top self-funded candidate ever: CaliforniaRepublican Meg Whitman, who spent over $140 million of her own money on her unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign. But perhaps the biggest campaign finance story of 2010 was the new landscape made possible by more lenient spending regulations.

So if you’re in the media business arguing that marketing does not matter when your entire revenue engine relies upon the very dark art that you decry, I find that to be… let me think… oh, right… hoodwinking.

Just like candidates who deem themselves as  flawless products which can be relentlessly sold and marketed with absolutely no qualm as they are the pure embodiment of perfection as an elected official. So when they tell you they can’t market the city as it’s just not perfect enough for their demanding standards of disclosure and honesty, you can be completely, utterly sure that you are not being hoodwinked at all.

It’s sheer perfection.

 

Anything But THAT!

A h/t to Tim Becker for highlighting this document on Regional Development. As a footnote, let me say that this document is available on Fulton County Chamber’s Web site but not on Montgomery County’s. I think this is a good example of ‘shared services’ as you don’t want to duplicate digital content so hopefully the local shared services warriors can add this to their case studies of shared services successes. With effectively unlimited bandwidth and storage for the Web, ‘sharing services’ around this document garners a savings of precisely zero dollars and higher search costs to me which proves the awesomeness of the shared services concept.

Let’s wait for the shared services warriors to tackle how much disk space we can save by consolidating and by reviewing with department heads each and every file on their computer — you know, the “line by line” argument where you can attack eight and nine figure issues with decimal approaches. I’ll look forward to campaign slogans like “Cut Gigabytes NOW!” and “No New Hard Drives!”.

Snark aside to make way for more snark, let’s look at Goal 3 in the plan:

Goal 3: Market the Region.

Marketing! No way, dudes and dudettes!

Remember kids in the city of Amsterdam: regardless of how everyone else advocates for marketing as a strategy and as a vehicle for growth, doesn’t mean we should do it here. just say NO to Marketing! I’ll look forward to the editorials and local punditry railing against marketing by this group as how can we market given all the problems we have. We have to fix all the Regional problems first and then market. That is what we have been told repeatedly and consistently so I expect a consistent set of arguments against this initiative.

Sure.

Also I’ll look forward to ‘sharing services’ on marketing which worked out so well for the city last time with AIDA and the county unless of course, ‘sharing services’ means collectively doing nothing, which by all measures, is the pinnacle of the ‘shared services’ mantra.

I’ll be deconstructing this document a bit in some follow up posts.

Ed Note: My snark is not directed at the Chambers but blind zealots of ‘shared services’ just so we’re clear.

View this document on Scribd

Don’t Call It Marketing

With the ongoing debate on whether we should or should not market the city, and its more pragmatic question  — how do we fund marketing, if at all — I want to highlight a bit of a paradox on the issue of marketing.

To me, the debate on marketing merely serves as a political wedge in the struggle to control the ever shrinking pie that is Amsterdam. So we’re not looking to grow the pie; we merely want to fight over the remaining crumbs.

If you doubt my view on marketing here as nothing more than spectator sport amongst political gladiators, you see that marketing is wholly embraced by each and every local political candidate. So while critics of marketing decry any marketing effort  as inherently dishonest, deceptive, ineffectual and irrelevant, the very same critics embrace marketing when it comes to their own campaigns.

Remember how we’re told that a city Web site is a waste of time and money? Let’s see how many candidates say that about their own Web site.

Remember how Facebook is irrelevant and a waste of time? You can see the candidates position on their own marketing on that.

Remember how we should not fret or care about branding or positioning or any of that marketing mumbo-jumbo? Let’s see how many candidates send you fliers, mailers, drop-ofs with carefully crafted wording on their own positions.

I could go on but I think the point is clear — politics is inherently a marketing endeavor: sell the candidate and sell the platform. Not only does each and every candidate market and sell, they spend a fair amount of time and money to do so. I think the latter statement is indisputable.

Which makes me wonder why we buy candidates who wholeheartedly market themselves without qualms but when it comes to the city, intentionally choose not to market it. If marketing is so vital to success in a political campaign, why is marketing deemed wholly irrelevant to the success of the city?

And remember, if you say that the city has too many potholes, blighted buildings, high taxes and thereby marketing represents some act of fraud to not disclose such problems, why does the very same body public accept the lack of disclosure on a candidate’s weaknesses. Should not each candidate disclose all that is wrong with them as well on their fliers, Web sites and Facebook pages?

Absurd, indeed, but somehow this marketing philosophy holds great sway here.

I don’t get it.

 

Gooses and Ganders

I’m at a loss to explain this editorial (here) :

Credit goes to Fownes, who began operation in Amsterdam in 1929, for staying in the area and for marketing their former properties.

“As soon as we made the decision to move, we put the building on the market, wanting to see it occupied in Amsterdam and wanting to not let it go into disrepair,” said Fownes Technical Director Rennie Sanges. “We were happy that we were able to find another person interested in the building and willing to utilize it.”

This is good news for the city. We’re hopeful that more will follow soon.

You see kids, it’s OK and praiseworthy for others to market and to promote the city as a place for business. We just should not do it ourselves. I’m flummoxed, baffled and utterly displeased with this continuing saga of cognitive dissonance and twisted reasoning on promoting the city.

Speaking of bafflement, I’m curious and baffled yet again at our local affairs given Democratic Alderman Wills endorsement of Paladino for Governor given the disparity between party platforms. I’m only going to highlight one issue perhaps of local interest should Paladino become governor. Per his platform (here), you see that he advocates taking over school districts via removal of the school board and superintendents if the graduation rate is less than 60%. As our graduation rate is 60% now , we may have a very real possibility of our local district falling to a takeover and thus headed by a “Special Master”. Let me resist all manners of snark and just leave it at that.

Power of Public Spaces

Interesting idea h/t to Leader Herald (here) from the Project for Public Spaces (here):

The Power of 10 leverages community assets
The bold idea that every town and neighborhood should have at least ten destinations, each with several things to do, has been greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm everywhere we talk about it. Now, public leaders all over the world are embracing this vision as an effective way of enlivening communities by tapping into local assets and knowledge of place. Offering people the chance to identify ten potential great places in their neighborhood can be a powerful tool in developing a vision to improve any community.

Open Thread Case Study: Marketing Hypothetical vs Reality

Beech Nut will be breaking ground in the Town of Amsterdam sometime this year with an influx of new jobs and people moving into the area. As a private or public stakeholder in the city, you must evaluate whether this presents any opportunities for you as a stakeholder in the city. You must make a presentation to the private and public stakeholders answering two basic questions:

1. Do you see Beechnut as an opportunity for the city?
a) This is meaningless as it’s hypothetical
b) No
c) Yes

2. If an opportunity, do you believe that we should market the goods and services (including real estate) in the community to this group?
a) Still meaningless as this is all hypothetical
b) No– no opportunity; no action required
c) No– no one wants to move or spend here; no action required
d) No– marketing is evil; equivalent to con-artistry and gimmickry; no action required
e) b+c+d
f) Yes