Chrysler was the first to figure out that a gritty,unpretentious, hardworking Detroit was a good marketing tool.
I remember watching the Chrysler 200 commercial with Eminem in 2011 at a Super Bowl party and being very impressed that someone had finally figured out how to make Detroit look cool without any b.s.
The ad resonated across the country, and for that matter, internationally. I had a former FBI agent in Washington tell me if she were in the market for a car, she'd buy a Chrysler 200 after seeing that commercial.
Since then, other companies like Shinola have caught on and capitalized on the Detroit image. Though some like Shinola have been criticized for exploiting Detroit's image to sell a product many residents can't afford.
Rose Hackman of The Guardian of London reports in an article about the phenomenon.
She writes:
To an advertiser's eye, Detroit is cool. Gritty. Tough. Resilient. Authentic in its struggle. True in its American spirit of hard, honest work, ruins and all.
That's where it gets uncomfortable for Detroit, The Brand. Detroit, the American phoenix rising from the economic ashes, is sitting on a valuable natural resource: street cred. This has not escaped the notice of profit-driven companies see the city's rebirth as a chance to brand themselves and sell authenticity.
The airwaves and billboards are plastered with ads from Chrysler (a Detroit native), Redbull (from Austria), new vodka brand from the giant French Pernod Ricard group, Our/Vodka, and luxury watch and bicycle company Shinola. They present a romantic, nostalgic take on grit – a highly effective spin, which presents poverty and urban decay as cool. The nostalgia element is all the more evident in that ads by Shinola, Redbull and Our/Vodka are often filmed in black and white.
The reporter spoke to Kirk Cheyfitz, CEO of New York-based advertising firm Story Worldwide, and a former Detroit Free Press, who talks about companies “wrapping themselves around a mythology that is outlaw”.
“It is a safe way to be appealing to young people all over the country who embrace those kinds of feelings – of wanting to be outside of the mainstream while actually defining the mainstream,” Cheyfitz says.
But the branding isn't all positive.
The Guardian writes:
As much as outside investment and an alternative narrative are needed to get the city back on its feet – and raise its desperately low tax base – some argue companies using the city’s brand may be getting more out of it than they are giving back.
“The economic impact of the Detroit brand on the material conditions of the residents of the city is limited at best,” says Bruce Pietrykowski, a professor in economics at the University of Michigan, who specializes in labor, industrial relations and urban political economy.
“What is important to mention is the way in which profit-making ventures – in some cases the very manufacturing firms that devastated the local economy – seek to exploit the image of de-industrialization, rebrand it as grit and determination, and use it to sell products at a mark-up.”
