Insularity – Part 2. New York New York.

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc. / LMMiami.com

• Pepe Beker, an Argentine adman (and avid marathoner) who’s had an outstanding professional career in México working for various multinational agencies and now runs his own wildly successful shop in CDMX told me once that, in his opinion, the countries that boast the best advertising are those in which ad professionals ride public transportation.
• It’s a soundbite, of course.
• A very insightful one, lemme tell you.
• Methinks it carries a gigantic truth that can be applied to most lines of business.
• Countries and cities where folks from different backgrounds, socioeconomic levels and walks of life rub shoulders every day back and forth from work and play are the healthiest, in every sense of the word.
• Having the latest opinion polls waiting for you on your desk every morning is not enough.
• Neither big data nor big research will ever replace human touch.
• Oddly enough, sometimes I feel New York is the exception to the rule.
• Yes, everybody rides the subway in NY but they are so immersed in their own realities (and their mobile devices) that they don’t seem to acknowledge what’s going on around them.1
• If you can make there you can make it anywhere.
• Really?
• Apart from the late Frank Sinatra2, many folks in the political & marketing realms seem to believe so too.
• Hillary Clinton (born in Illinois, first lady in Arkansas) went out of her way, literally, to become a senator for New York and established her presidential campaign bunker in Brooklyn.
• Donald Trump’s HQ overlooks Central Park.
• Next thing you know, Pepsi decides to put in place, according to AdAge, “a 4,000-square-foot content creation studio is in the heart of SoHo (…) overseen by Brad Jakeman, president of PepsiCo’s global beverage group. The space includes a 2,300-square-foot, multiuse recording studio, five editing and production bays, and a theater-style screening room with 10 oversize leather chairs.” 3
• Plus this: according to the New York Times “Pepsi is now moving into the restaurant business. The 5,000-square-foot space in Chelsea (Pepsi insists it resides in the ultrahip meatpacking district) — will become Kola House, a restaurant-bar-event space that the company hopes will be both social hub and testing ground for new products.” 4
• Well well.
• Talk about New York navel gazing.
• What about the rest of us?
• The mortals who live outside the rarefied atmosphere of the Big Apple.
• The heartland, the flyover states.
• Are we not good enough as a trial market?
• There’s a fine line between aspirational early adoption, trend hunting and head-up-your-ass insular snobbery.
• Politicians, marketers, advertisers, we need to get out more in this business.
• Diversity should be geographic too (as opposed to solely demographic).
• By the way, d’you know why New York exists?
• Few people are aware that the reason New York was founded in the first place is because, due to nautical reasons, it was the closest piece of land that ships sailing from Colonial Europe would touch after crossing the Atlantic.
• Make no mistake, the boats coming from the old world had no interest in New York, whose staple stock in trade back in the day was cheap animal pelts and little else.
• The vessels were mostly headed to the REAL jewels of the European empires of yore: Cuba & Jamaica.
• Due to military, economic and trade reasons, said islands were the real strategic assets that the Spaniards and the Brits wanted to protect.
• New York?
• Just a backwater town to make a quick stop when sailing to the real important places. 5
• The tide might change.
• Univision’s own The Onion had to move from gentrified New York to more affordable Chicago due to financial issues. 6
• Detroit seems to be coming back as an attractive hub of cheap real estate for service industry types, artists, assorted hipsters and trendsetters.
• Disclaimer: by no means I’m claiming I’m immune to the insularity malaise.
• I live & work in Miami, aka NY’s sixth borough.
• To be continued.

1 D’you know the New York metro area ranks among the urban clusters with the highest life expectancy in America? Yup, despite the stress, the noise, the crazy cost of living and the filthy weather. Why? Experts believe the one reason that might explain it is the amount of walking the average New Yorker clocks in everyday, rain, snow or shine.
2 As is the case with most of Sinatras’s hits, Ol’ Blue Eyes was not the composer. New York New York was penned by songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb
3 Source: http://adage.com/article/agency-news/pepsi-taps-agency-digital-brings-social-house/306440/
4 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/business/media/pepsi-turns-restaurateur-to-serve-up-some-buzz.html?_r=0
5 Source: Gotham. A history of New York City to 1898. By Edwin G. Burrows & Mike Wallace. Oxford University Press, 1999
6 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/05/business/media/how-to-satirize-this-election-even-the-onion-is-having-trouble.html?_r=0