In Brooklyn, Brand Value Outpacing Real Estate
Even if Brooklyn’s condo prices are no longer skyrocketing, the value of its brand still is, according to a recent piece in the NY Press. Check it: I was having lunch yesterday with someone from a prominent Brooklyn cultural institution and he admitted that he now gets requests to collaborate with his arts organization simply…
Even if Brooklyn’s condo prices are no longer skyrocketing, the value of its brand still is, according to a recent piece in the NY Press. Check it:
I was having lunch yesterday with someone from a prominent Brooklyn cultural institution and he admitted that he now gets requests to collaborate with his arts organization simply because they’re located in Brooklyn. “We think it would be great to do something with you guys,” he’s been told. “We’d really like to have BROOKLYN associated with our name. It’ll look great on the poster.” Isn’t it grand how quickly a borough can become a brand?
This anecdote comes as no surprise to us. Do you think there’s the risk of overexposure to the brand, though? Might there be brand fatigue at some point and, God forbid, a backlash?
The Brooklyn Brand to Expand [NY Press]
Photo by Dan Cox
It used to be that the distance from Manhattan to Brooklyn was much greater than the reverse. No more, I’m glad to say!
Park Slopers, DUMBOites, and Brooklyn Heights-types tend to all say the neighborhood first rather than “Brooklyn” first (though I guess with BH, that’s semi-semantic; my point is that in the Heights, they’ll tend to say BH rather than just Brooklyn).
I think the explanation of this is pretty simple – these are established and or well-known areas; if you tell an UWS person you live in Fort Greene, they may or may not know where that is. But by now, everyone knows where the Slope is.
Queens, on the other hand, is so friggin’ huge, that neighborhood identification is key.
On a related point, Queens residents tend to put their neighborhood on their postal addresses, and the postal service delivers to them just fine. In Brooklyn, you tend to just see the boro name used on mailing addresses. All this begs the question – why does Manhattan have a monopoly on the “New York” in their mailing address? It’s supposed to be city, not county (or else it would be Kings in Brooklyn).
One of the great draws of Brooklyn was that it was affordable to regular working folks.
That is why it was so stigmatized by the Manhattan elites. It is no longer affordable and how hip it really is depends on who you ask.
I think most who live in Park Slope would say neighborhood first before Brooklyn.
I’ve lived in Brooklyn for 25 years and can attest to the Bridge and Tunnel stigma that used to exist. Now it’s cool to live here. Brooklyn is too big to experience an overall backlash… do you think immigrants will no longer want to live here because it’s overexposed? Hipsters, possibly, after they’ve all been displaced to Canarsie.
Along these lines, I’ve found something interesting over the past few years. In my general socio-economic group (gentrifiers), there’s a clear borough-based trend in how people identify where they live:
Brooklyn residents, when asked where they live, will respond “Brooklyn” first, and then clarify with a neighborhood afterwards, if asked.
Residents of a certain other borough invariably respond with the neighborhood first: “oh, I live in [Jackson Heights, Long Island City, Astoria].” It appears that nobody lives in “Queens.”
If 35 years is quick – then yes it is amazing how quick;
Did anyone see the ad on TV for the new Ford car (called the Edge), where youngins leave the bright light big city of manhattan for dinner at Marlow and Sons (but they need to use their GPS to get there)?
Funny how “bridge and tunnel” and “718” just don’t have the sting they had in 1987….