The Recorder has an editorial on marketing the city (here). Let me make a few comments in this saga of marketing:

This is one of several reasons we feel strongly that elected officials should have secondary roles in economic development if they have any involvement at all.

Basing a city’s economic development on positions or departments that can drastically change from administration to administration doesn’t provide the measure of consistency necessary to stay competitive with other municipalities.

I’m struggling with this reasoning as departments and policies fundamentally get shifted administration to administration. Just look at federal level Cabinet positions such as Commerce Director or OMB director or numerous committee chairmanships that impact global competitiveness. Why does that work with a global economy but somehow cannot be made to work on a local level?

I think the distinction is that locally, much like the back-and-forth on marketing versus no-marketing, the policy positions of the parties in charge use this issue as a wedge issue so if one party establishes a department distinct from the political pressures argued by the editorial such as the CED, the council then defunds it to pursue the non-marketing policy.  Hence which branch of government is left to pursue policy goals — the executive. And why should we discourage the mayor as the elected executive of the city from promoting the city? Funny how no one tells Mayor Stratton or Jennings that they just need to move on and not worry about promoting their cities.

I also struggle a bit that we view the other agencies cited by the Recorder for economic development to somehow not be subject to political forces. That makes me chuckle like most people who know something of the political landscape here.

Let’s now look at this section:

Realistically, does anyone think Amsterdam can compete with other cities if its marketing efforts are in the hands of a part-time confidential aide and a mayor whose priorities are managing the city’s numerous departments?

If Thane is a marketing genius, she’s in the wrong job. Beyond that, what happens when at some point she’s not in office and the next mayor has no interest or ability to carry on such a crucial role in economic development?

I see a bit of a paradox here where there appears to be some recognition  of Amsterdam to compete with other municipalities via marketing. On the question of marketing genius, I think that misses the question completely. The key question here is why do we as a community advocate against promoting our own city and indeed, believe as a guiding principle that there should be no ownership or accountability for our own city’s marketing efforts. With that as a backdrop, you cannot then frame the issue as one of marketing prowess with an un-marketing climate and with an effort that has close to zero funding. Let’s recall that even creating and launching a Web site was deemed negatively because it may show some nice images of the city. We are nowhere near marketing as we do not have marketing as a core principle in our strategy. In light of that resistance,  marketing has proceeded forward in spite of that resistance.

Let’s move to here:

Thane could meet with Rose on a regular basis to see what marketing and economic development activities his department is working on relating to the city. Another option is to create a volunteer economic development committee that could be a branch of the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce. Perhaps an agency could be set up similar to the Metroplex model that has worked so well for Schenectady.

What the editors advocate here is a process with no accountability, no oversight and hence no chance for succeeding. I’m all for volunteer efforts but you do not place core strategy and core tactics in volunteer’s hands if you want to succeed. Let’s be candid: how much sway do volunteer committees and groups have in shaping policy against the entrenched political forces here? Somewhere quite near zero.

Let me end on an up note and that is the Metroplex model cited by the Recorder. I could see some common ground here to explore such an entity. But before we kid ourselves that that will solve our problems, we need to then accept that we, actually and indeedily doodily , need to pursue marketing. A MetroPlex will not succeed if we cannot convince ourselves of that as the very fundamental step in the process.

Let me end with a thought on this debate for a bit of perspective. The CED was created in the Duchessi administration so it’s been something like 10 years since we decided that we needed to market and promote the city via the CED. I’m not sure how long ago it was defunded but in looking at today, do we feel we are better off and materially in better position by defunding it? Since that time, have we fixed all the problems that needed to be fixed before we can market?

It is an ongoing sage and while we dither and seek to win in this perennial battle of attrition on marketing versus un-marketing, our competitors will move on and ahead.

As always.

If you think that creating a super regional business park represents a groundbreaking achievement in collaboration between counties and of course, the riches that will flow from rubbing the genie lamp of  ”shared services”, I have a four letter word for you:

MOSA

As I read the Sunday Recorder (here and here and here), I’m simply confounded by the arguments put forth on economic development for the city.  If cognitive dissonance and epistemic closure were weather patterns, we would head for the basements to hunker down from the ensuing storms, mindful of our suddenly piqued interest in the strength of our wooden beams and concrete walls  as we descend the stairway.

Of course, the conventional and legacy argument states that we cannot market the city unless the city is improved. Perhaps, New and Improved is more likely the unstated goal; nevertheless, the argument states in no uncertain terms that we are  not ready to go to market with what we have.  So the question that is never asked, and is the inherent and natural conflict in marketing and product development, is precisely when — give or take a decade– will we be ready to market? At what point from today, will we be ready to unleash Amsterdam New and Improved, Version 2.0?

I daresay it is never.

Because we will never be able to demolish enough of the city and build a suburban dystopia utopia in the city. Because we will never have the return of large industries reviving the silent factories and mills of yesteryear. Because there will always be some obstacle — real or imagined– which will forever get nearer but will elude our hopeful grasp. It’s an asymptotic process seeking asymptotic success,and  if such a business strategy existed it would entail a centuries long strategy to achieve its ultimate aim of failing to reach its end point. Clearly we have decades to go until the brilliance of this strategy reaches its apex.

If we look at the tactics driving this strategy, we find ourselves in a bit of a conundrum. While we cannot and should not market as a core strategic principle, we meanwhile pursue tactics such as a paid agreement with the county to perform what we deem impossible and undesirable — marketing our city. As marketing the city elicits the same reaction as plunging ourselves in raw sewage, we simply outsource the task so we do not sully ourselves in the process.

Meanwhile we forever look to the great expenses we must incur to keep this city from its predetermined oblivion. Imagine heading a company with a product so revolting, so awful, so ewww!, that your features ashen at the mere mention of even showing it to a customer. So you sit with your team huddled in a conference room nervously twitching lest anyone see your logo upon this dreaded product that could be unleashed upon the world. Regrettably for us, we  reside here, and like it or not, we are inextricably bound to this dismal product as part of its very fabric.  Why, most in the room would feel greater pride and higher moral ground in marketing cadmium-rich toys to toddlers and newborns than to make a salient pitch for someone to live in this city. I feel dirty even writing about it.

It’s more than clear and demonstrably true that the underlying strategies and tactics of the past decades failed spectacularly and epically to position this city in the marketplace of cities of today. Yet if clinging to tradition means not changing and not innovating then certain failure still reigns supreme to uncertain success. It is why fatalism and pessimism is a cause celebre’  here. Nothing elicits more scorn and contempt than a bright vision or a projection for a better tomorrow though innovation and purpose. That simply will not stand. How dare you even consider marketing the city?

If you brazenly err mentioning or endeavoring to pursue such a dark art as marketing, you must not really understand marketing or product development at all — you must be naive at best, delusional at worst.  To the experts who profess to understand such an arcane art as marketing and product development, it is a cut and dry matter: you only market when your product is ready. In their eyes, the product — in this case, the city– should be viewed exactly the same as any  product sitting on the shelf at Walmart. So people view marketing  our city with the same mindset as they would market laundry detergenet. But our local experts know marketing resolves to a simple matter — price. We must be the lowest priced; price reigns supreme and as cities embody the core attributes of any commodity, then low price assures success. Indeed we will out-Walmart Walmart as the price king against our fellow communities competitors.  What folly to compete on anything but price in the marketplace! How laughable we are told that you compete on anything but price. How laughable to consider cities as diametrically opposed to commodity economics.

Indeed the markets do laugh — unfortunately they laugh at us, not with us. Markets laugh at viewing a product and marketing strategy as strictly based upon price. Markets laugh at competing on price when your cost structure assures your price to be your lowest form of competitive advantage . Markets laugh at viewing selling a community with the same principle as selling laundry detergent and viewing a community as a commodity.

To the self-professed experts on products and marketing, the underlying features of the product matter little if at all. This why what I naively consider the competitive advantage and market differentiators of our city– historic and significant architecture, unique neighborhoods, sidewalks, front porches — matter the least if at all unless, as I tend to say, they are at the end of a wrecking ball. Even our historic City Hall building is now too much of a burden to shoulder so the figurative now becomes literal as City Hall may now be housed in our local mall. What should be considered the surreal is instead quite real in our fair city. But if the move were to occur it would be the manifestation of our product strategy — turn the authentic urban fabric of our city into a faux suburbia. Why not, historic architecture remains an impediment, a bug if you will, in our product. If you can’t aluminum side it and you can’t tear it down, just move into the ultimate manifestation of suburbia — our local mall– and be done with it.

Of all the features of our city and amongst the pablum of marketing and products, the feature no one dare discuss is our school system. As we are fond of our acronyms for our public entities to market for us — AIDA, URA, CED, MCCC, WTF, et al — why do we not add GASD to the mix? After all, if our city is a product, is not the school system one of the features of said product? Well, according to our local experts, not really. You might find this counter-intuitive to understand so let me explain the underlying principle.

As the GASD, the city and the county operate under their own charter and their own governance, each is its own entity and operates as such. In product terms, you are getting a package deal — you can’t buy any one without buying the other. As a customer, it seems rational to view the product experience and product quality as the aggregate set of features across all products including the GASD. But wait, you’re not supposed to do that. You must instead view the city product distinctly as if they were wholly distinct and separate. It’s like buying a car and when you ask about the engine, the sales and marketing literature refer you to another company. When you then question how you can evaluate the product functionality of the whole car, you are derided for your foolishness in not understanding how they market and develop products.  You clearly don’t get business.

If you doubt this assertion, it’s easy enough to test drive: ask an elected leader on the role of the school district vis-a-vis economic development and you will see what I mean. It’s amusing then to see claims of marketing and product prowess from the very players acting as stewards of our school district in light of our test scores and our pursuit of the now discredited magnet school approach.

If we truly want to think of products and marketing, it’s important to step back and ask a simple question, 101 at its finest — why do we market and why do we develop products? Simple question, really, why?

[insert long pause here for readers to ponder]

The only reason you market and develop products is to sell them to a customer.  Period. If you do not sell, you have no need for marketing or products or strategy or anything at all. You should just close up shop and liquidate.

And that is exactly the product we are going to market with Amsterdam Version 2.0 to be released in 2057.

Brilliant.

If you want to see how misguided other cities are toward economic development and their historic buildings, look no further than this article in the Recorder ( Historic buildings get a facelift.):

Broadalbin native Dave Eglin has regained ownership of the three structures, located at 13-17 W. Main St., across the street from the village municipal building.

Eglin said in the two decades since he first owned them, “people let them go. They were all run into the ground. It’s a shame to see Main Street and the historic buildings in the shape that they were. Rather than let someone else buy them and continue to have to look at them as they were, I decided to repurchase.”

Flippin here. I can’t help but chuckle at such thinking. Don’t they know that historic buildings are a blemish better suited for a wrecking ball so you can then have an empty canvas and lot for development? And what about the parking: first and foremost, you need plenty of parking space and then your businesses will develop; you don’t develop business first, you create parking lots first. Parking lots literally rule as an economic development engine! And what about bringing industry back to Broadalbin: I don’t see a way to bring medium or large sized businesses, corporate owned and taxpayer funded, with the promise of hundreds of jobs, just locally owned and managed small businesses. Crazy.

And finally, who wants to live and move to Broadalbin without demolition, enough parking and the hope for huge businesses in legacy industries. That’s crazy. I’ll admit they have a good school district but no one cares about school districts when choosing a place to start a business or raise a family, they look at parking lots, demolition and thriving large businesses owned by faceless corporations.

Crazy, crazy, crazy.

I think the evolving commentary — around the grant writer, AIDA, URA, the Council — misses the key point. (Story here)

While the attention gets focused on the process and funding for grant writing, what about the overall objective of bringing growth to the community? Who owns that?

I might be wrong with this but my impression is that the ownership of economic growth is muddy at best.  Even worse we have no objective way to gauge whether we are succeeding or failing as we have no metrics for the process.  So this back-and-forth on the grant writer is a sideshow rather than a core issue of bringing growth to the community. Sure, grants are important but what is the overall economic strategy?

Now when you pose the question of strategy, you naturally get into the question of vision and here’s where it gets troubling for me. If you were to deduct a strategy from the names of the entities AIDA and URA, you would literally end up with “Industrial Development” and “Urban Renewal”, respectively, as the strategies or perhaps the missions of the organizations. Now let me create a bit of a strawman here and let’s admit the strawman would say something like “Come on Flippin, just because it’s part of the name it does not mean that is the strategy!”. I beg to differ.

You don’t have to look too far back in the public record to see the desire and aim to revisit widescale demolition as a strategy for driving development in the city, you know, urban renewal. Nor do you have to look too far back to find the champions of an industrial development strategy as a way to bring growth back to the city. And for those believing the path ahead lies in reviving urban renewal or industrial development, the agencies literally become vehicles for said strategies. This should not stand. It’s akin to embracing the view that the Earth is flat.

What should stand is a way to repurpose these entities for a viable strategy forward from 2010, not from 1910. That should be the focus of the conversations and efforts to drive economic growth, not the attendant sideshow of whether a 7 figure return justifies a 5 figure expense.

Let me be clear: I recognize that not all stakeholders in the agencies or even all members of the community share the above views so I’m not trying to paint with too broad a brush. At the same time, a sizable swath of the community and political leadership does indeed embrace urban renewal and industrial development as viable, perhaps even the only strategies in their eyes. The brush may not be broad, but it’s not that fine either.

Let me pile on a bit more: where is the local business community in the process? Do they not have a stake in whatever strategy evolves? Are they in the flat-Earth society too?

Developing strategy is tough work; building consensus amongst multiple stakeholders is even tougher work; holding on to anachronisms for our alphabet soup of economic development agencies, well, that requires no work at all.