Imagining Alexandria’s Future
A new marketing group envisions the city as a launching pad for innovation and creativity, and hopes to create a ‘cluster effect’ to attract like-minded businesses.
By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 14, 2009
As Hollywood is to movies, Silicon Valley to software and New York’s Garment District to fashion, a group of cutting-edge marketing and advertising boutique companies in Alexandria wants to make the city the place to be for what they call the “creative class.”
The vision of the group, which calls itself iMAGINE Alexandria, is for the city to become the place where creative ideas are born — in engineering, architecture, art, marketing, Web and graphic design firms — along a specially zoned corridor in Old Town and patented up the road at the Patent and Trade Office.
The idea, they say, is to create a “cluster effect” of creative minds, firms and ideas that not only produce the best products, but also attract like-minded companies and top talent to locate in the city and international businesses to seek creative counsel, ultimately reshaping the image of Alexandria.
“The cluster effect is powerful,” said Nancy Belmont, chairman of iMAGINE Alexandria and chief executive of Belmont Inc., an advertising firm that says it creates “meaningful connections” between brands and consumers. “Change and innovation happen fast with clustering,” Belmont said. “Creativity is explosive. You never get your best ideas sitting in a room by yourself. Your best ideas come from being surrounded by 20 other great creative minds.”
Belmont and the six other founders and board members are hoping to find a space, a “hub,” that will function as a place where this creative class can meet and share and apply ideas, hold workshops, test products, learn about the latest technology or trend sweeping the nation and serve as an incubator for new creative businesses. They also hope to host speakers and conferences for businesses from around the world seeking innovation and to attract tourists to the hub’s “museum and gift shop” of commercial creativity.
“When the creative class gathers, it creates a cool city,” Belmont said.
Belmont shared her vision at her Old Town office, where the walls are painted a bright orange and are covered with colorful squares with words such as “Collaborate” and “Excellence” and “Innovate.” The small, warehouselike space is open and decorated with vivid artwork and samples of past ad campaigns. A drum kit sits in one corner near the garage door. Every Thursday, the door comes up and some employees start to jam.
The idea first came to Belmont a few years ago, she said. She had been reading a book by Richard Florida, “The Rise of the Creative Class,” about how sweeping changes in technology and innovation were changing the landscape of cities and towns as creative types sought one another out in flexible, interesting work spaces and diverse, tolerant and “hip” atmospheres.
At the time, a committee appointed by Alexandria’s mayor was peering into the city’s future, trying to see the economic way forward for a place that was no longer an industrial port and that relied on residential property taxes for more than half of its revenue. In 2006, as much as 62 percent of the city’s revenue base came from residential property owners. That, city officials said, was not only too much of a burden on residents, but it also did not bode well for the economic growth and health of the city.
Fostering the growth of a “creative class” was listed as one of the top priorities in the 2007 Mayor’s Economic Sustainability Workgroup recommendations.
Then the Alexandria Economic Partnership devised a list of at least 230 companies in the city that could be considered part of this creative class. Belmont was floored, she said, because she had no idea that many firms were doing creative work, and doing well, in the city. She said she began to think how much better their businesses could do if they knew one another and began to network. She gathered six other like-minded members of the creative class, and thus was born iMAGINE Alexandria.
The point immediately hit home with Brad Nierenberg, who heads RedPeg Marketing, a firm that specializes in “creating events and experiences” in advertising, and who is one of the directors of iMAGINE Alexandria. In the previous year, he had contracted $4 million worth of work to firms in Altanta, Chicago, New York and North Carolina. He had no idea there were firms in Alexandria doing the same innovative work on the Web with video and graphic design.
“I could have kept the business here,” he said. “I could have helped a local small creative business flourish.”
The iMAGINE directors began holding seminars and networking events. Next month, they’ll host a cupcake design contest, because, they said, chefs and caterers are part of that creative class.
The directors’ idea is clear: “Our mission is to organize a community and create a cooperative space for commercial creative professionals to get inspired, grow their businesses, share resources and highlight their work to partners, customers and the general public,” Belmont said.
They’re just not sure how to do it. “We know how to run our own businesses, but we don’t know how to come up with a creative business plan for a developer,” Belmont said. “We’re looking for a partner.”
Last year, they met with city officials, who endorsed the idea. “Alexandria needs this,” the iMAGINE Web site (http://www.imaginealexandria.org) quotes City Manager Jim Hartman as saying. “This is big. And it’s the right thing to do.”
Belmont and the others are trying to raise $250,000 to begin feasibility planning for the site, and they have met with developers to try to identify places to build a Creative Center. So far, a number of firms have signed on to the idea and together pledged $11.5 million.
“Everybody gets it,” Nierenberg said. He’s not worried about competition or idea stealing, he said, because he sees power in collaboration, and also because so many firms are specialized in this fast-changing market.
His own advertising industry is a good example. Not long ago, companies went to ad agencies on Madison Avenue to design national campaigns to be shown on one of the three major TV networks. Now, with the advent of the TV remote, TiVo, DVRs and satellite radio, consumers can and do shut down the more than 5,000 ad messages sent their way every day. So advertising has become much more targeted and strategic, and it often provides a little something extra, such as an e-mail video that appeals to people who then forward it to friends. Guerrilla campaigns. Viral video. Social networking.
Or, as in Neirenberg’s case, an ad campaign for Rosetta Stone, a language-learning company, might entail hiring international models to ask people questions in foreign languages and then hand out cards for seven free days of classes.
“Doing what you do best is the best use of your time,” he said. “If one of us can’t do the work, or can’t do it as well as another firm, we refer to each other.”
“And what goes around, comes around,” Belmont added. “We all understand how the business works. If we give and take, we all prosper.”
They have far to go, Belmont and Nierenberg said. “It’s a tiny seedling,” Belmont said of the idea. “So right now, in the creative community, when someone says, ‘I’m an Alexandria firm,’ it may not mean much.”
“But two or three years from now,” Nierenberg said, “it will.”
For more info and to see a City of vision – check out http://www.imaginealexandria.org/