Dayton could use THIS kind of marketing!

Ok, this is actually an extended ad for BMW, but it is interestingly tied to Richard Florida's Creative Class theory.  And while it is simply an ad for BMW, I believe it communicates the definition of the Creative Class in a very well done and well produced video.  Now I realize that this probably took a ton of money to produce, but imagine if Dayton could have some marketing like this!  THIS is what it means to be creative - watch it and tell us what you think... (click on the pic)

 

Comments

[Bob Troxell]

All this talk of "Creative Class" . . isn't it just referring to the "haves" vs. the "have nots"? Obviously, BMW is interested in people with the income to afford expensive cars, but I'm not sure how that applies to the Dayton area. Dayton's heyday was built on the boom in manufacturing, at a time when the Western states were not as developed as they are now. Those jobs have been moved overseas, and the opportunities lie in other parts of the U.S. While I think its important to "talk up" Dayton, I think its unrealistic to think that, during the foreseeable future, Dayton will be unable to attract a significant "Creative Class". We just don't have the amenties and/or climate to lure such people away from major cities to come live in Dayton.

[Bill Pote]

Bob - thank you for your comment. Though I will disagree, I appreciate your constructive criticism...

I have to assume that you live in the suburbs (based on the other comment you left on "Get Midwest - We think of Everything"), and like many people in this region, I don't think you are aware of the existing creative class that does indeed live in Dayton proper. I happen to be one of them, and I have many friends here that are like me. So it isn't about attracting the creative class - we are already here.

I do think that the fact that this is a BMW ad is misleading in that having money and being able to afford expensive cars is not what the creative class is necessarily all about. Sure, many of us make more money than the average person because of what we do for a living, but it isn't what defines us. I was hesitant to even post this video (a BMW commercial) for that reason, but you have to admit - it was a slick production. It was everything before they started showing the car that I wanted people to see.

[Jeffrey]

"..isn't it just referring to the "haves" vs. the "have nots"?"

Not really. If you've read Drucker and Robert Reich they refer to "knowlege workers" and "symbolic anaylsts", so the phenomenon has been around for a while, and noticed by other economics writers. They are describing an expansion in a certain kind of work and the growth of a new class of workers.

Florida broadens this a bit, and notes certain correlations with things usually thought of (in the US) as unrelated to economic development.

But yes there is growing inequality. This is occuring throughout the industrialized world. It has been described as the winner-take-all economy.

Perhaps Dayton has been shielded from this till the recent past due to the large amount of jobs here paying living wages and then some.

Now we are joining the rest of the world

What this means is that the economic driver for the Dayton region will be creative class work. Even what's left of manufacturing here will have a "creative" aspect due to the skills needed and the products produced.

[Theresa G]

Bob - what you bring up is a deep concern of Richard Florida's which he elaborates more about in Flight of the Creative Class.

There is a growing class divide because we have lost so many of the middle class or working class jobs. Right now everything is either "creative" class or "service" class (restaurant, fast food, hotel, etc).

Florida states many times in Flight that this is not about chasing the 30% currently working in creative class jobs - it's about tapping into the creativity of the other 70%.

[David Gasper]

To plan creative class initiatives, we should start fomulating generally items. Below is my list to start the discussion.

• Retain graduating talent in the Dayton area
Get college students hooked on the area while here
Help recent and new college graduates land in the area.
Jobs
Opportunities

• Revitalize regional urban areas
Change culture from dead thru the week to:
Lots of activity every day
Start with small groups instead of one large events
Frequency of through the week activities.
Fill the dead time
Get innovators to frequent these activities
Get college students and recent graduates to participate in nightly non-weekend street scene activity
Change urban transportation
More frequent intra urban shuttles
Shuttles that stay in the urban areas.
Higher frequency

Make urban areas bicycle commute friendly
Easy to get to work
Bicycle storage at work
Alternate for bad weather days
Links to recreation bike paths as well

Get people to visit urban more
Housing, work and amenities will follow
Tough chicken and egg situation

Support Mike Ervin’s Arts district initiative
Make the project about arts commerce
Attract arts commerce from outside of the area
Connect the project to:
Street scene life
Transportation
Housing (already there)

Make activities more about networking less about formality
Speed date entrepreneurs
Mentorships for potential leaders
Identify movers and shakers and support them

[Jeffrey]

For cultural districts, the Knight Foundation has some research posted that could be of help. These studies were prepared by Penn's Social Impact of the Arts project:

Cultivating Natural Cultural Districts:
http://www.knightfoundation.org/research_publications/detail.dot?id=233561

Culture and Urban Revitalization, a Harvest Document (this is more a literature review):
http://www.knightfoundation.org/research_publications/detail.dot?id=233558

[yvan melnikoff]

Some thoughts on the current discussions

“Make urban areas bicycle commute friendly
Easy to get to work
Bicycle storage at work
Alternate for bad weather days
Links to recreation bike paths as well
Get people to visit urban more
Housing, work and amenities will follow
Tough chicken and egg situation” –Theresa Gaspar

I totally agree that parks, green-spaces, and downtown amenities can serve as solid anchors in any revitalization process.

This is from a DAYTON CITY PAPER article of mine that ran the first week of ‘08. “Imagineering” is a term Disney charged his creative team with,…prior to the development of Epcot and Disneyworld,…please factor that notion into some of the more whimsical notions proposed.

My “imagineering” of Dayton as the city of the future takes me on some creative flights of fancy. Take every rustbelt property in Dayton and bring it to the ground in an orgy or destruction. Initiate a film commission to sell the implosions as cut rate special effects. Demolish all nonperforming adjacent properties, add to the debris cover with dirt. Shape moguls and buy snowmaking machines (it would probably cost less than the fountains parked in the middle of the river and would provide a return on investment). Charge the priority board system with maintenance of the skate parks and adjacent development zones. Require the development zones to conform to profiles like the recent Brown Street makeover using local contractors only. Charge the newly created film commission with developing the remaining abandoned warehouses as movie sound stages, a series of interconnected parks and raised trams, and more green space (think Central Park in New York). In addition, outlaw lawns in lieu of flowers. Require year-round exterior greenspace on every level in every parking garage and greenery as exterior architectural elements in new codes. Green out the center lanes of all four lane city streets to one lane each way with a green center divider. Flesh out missing entertainment niches to compliment the Schuster Center and Victoria Theatre. Resurrect the Arcade as an R&B/funk museum dedicated to the local pioneers of a major musical style. A downtown music hall of fame could be a magnet attraction and begin the re-definition of Dayton as a mecca for multicultural artistic expression.

On the The BMW ad, talking up Dayton and ground up “people” development

“Florida states many times in Flight that this is not about chasing the 30% currently working in creative class jobs - it's about tapping into the creativity of the other 70%.”posted by Jeffrey

Dayton might be able to generate all the home-grown promotion it can handle and invigorate Florida’s 70% By rethinking some processes,…

which is what I believe, (and am hoping) will be the charge to the Creative Catalysts, and one of the results of the Creative Initiative

For instance if the if the $1.5 million dollars used for the Midwestern branding had been thrown down as a prize in a competition open to regional universities/art schools, or anyone willing to pony up a nominal entry fee to compete in the branding campaign, Dayton could have filled up the town with its’ first “creativity/development” festival of the presentations to which art work of the sort already being posted at

http://daytonology.blogspot.com/2008/01/get-midwestbe-midwest.html

could be solicited and exhibited.

All branding entries would undergo an art show type jury as a screening process, and a formal visual presentation would be required of every accepted entry. Regional branding could have been a Dayton “Sundance” symposium of regional marketing ideas within which marketing/pr/advertising, business, business development creatives could network, conduct workshops, hold seminars. The winner would be determined by some sort of scoring system from a celebrity jury, community and audience input. Broad based regional consensus, buy-in and commitment to support and develop the campaign would result naturally from the process. The appeal of a lottery style regional branding contest is a natural MSM story and a natural internet viral opportunity (= free PR) for the campaign from beginning to end,…the process is self generating because it is driven from the bottom up.

http://www.udayton.edu/News/Article/?contentId=6701

http://www.udayton.edu/News/Article/?contentId=8183

[David Gasper]

Keep the Creative Class Initiatives coming:

Here are couple more initiatives:

- work force development. Currently we have a mismatch. We have numerous high tech job openings that are unfilled and a high unemployment.

So how we convert the unemployed to fill those high tech jobs? If we did, the areas economy would be drstically different.

So how do we convert the 70% to the 30%?

There are lots of reasons why people are unemployed.
- lack skills (hard and soft)
- can't work
- won't work

There are efforts to address this situation, but more can and should be done.

[David Gasper]

Creative Class Wright Pat project

In 2009, the Dayton area will gain 1,000 jobs.

Many are high tech jobs int he labs etc...

How can we leverage those into more jobs?

Silicon valley is famous for satelite businesses springing for core industry. Apple had its roots in Hewlett Packard and Xerox.

So how can we create additional jobs? Non government. Commercial applications, etc...

[David Gasper]

Creative Class - working inside or outside the system.

Current infrastructure is always an issue. In the United States, we have less mobile service than internationally due to the simple fact that our land lines were the best in the world for years. It allowed emerging countries to leap frog us.

I wish it was as easy as blowing everything up and starting over. Sometimes that works. I would love to see some examples besides Vegas.

The United States has a big backlash against Imminent domain, so there is lots of political resistance from many parties not just the old white fat cats who percievably control everything. Lots of small groups who feel trampled on or being left out resist change even more!

So to develop the Creative Class projects here, we must work with in and without the current systems.

Transition will not be easy. I have thrown out a lot of projects for thought. Making them happen will be hard, hard work. Many good people in this community are already working on MOST of these.

[Theresa Gasper]

I'd like to see at least one of the initiatives centered around the Dayton Public School system - how to improve it, change it, revitalize it, whatever.

Here's a good article I had forwarded to me today...it talks about working with local businesses vs national chains. It has some really good ideas...
http://www.ysnews.com/stories/2008/01/013108_local.html

My hubby mentioned work force development. Why not an ISUS for Adults - especially former Delphi or other factory workers who may know how to do some electrical, plumbing or carpentry work but have never been officially trained. Sooner or later this housing slump will end and there will be another shortage of good quality sub contractors.

And along the idea Yvan was going with - why not find a creative reuse for abandoned manufacturing buildings. Or maybe tear them down. If we want to erase the rust belt image, maybe a demolition party is the way to go...as long as they're not historically significant or just too cool.

As for the branding - I think everyone needs to knock off the Monday Morning Quarterbacking - the branding campaign has been decided. Sorry if your idea wasn't selected, but let's support the one we've got.

[ms_kitty]

Jeffrey - imagineering - I love the whole idea...

how about demolishing all of the eyesores/drug havens & replant all the land? Let's become an organic farming community or maybe take on hydroponic food production. We've come to a point where food poisoning is directing attention to growing food close to where it's consumed for safety.

Let's focus on entertainment using green space that would be freed up by flattening the slums. We have a huge population of young blacks - let's exploit their culture and become the rap capital of the US - promoting the music, dance, clothing, etc.

There are for-profit prisons that take anyone's prisoners. Why don't we establish for-profit organizations that will employ people and raise revenue - for example, why not promote spas & become the spa capital of the world or why not focus on prep schools and become the place other cities can send their problem youth for "retraining"? Why don't we become the religious capital of the world and focus on tent revivals, minaret construction, synagogue artifacts...

Let's become the World Affair - build communities of immigrants by making it a friendly, supportive place to move and bring friends and relatives.

Creativity is what will turn Dayton around if anything can.