San Francisco is searching for its ‘I ❤️ NY’ moment

To outsiders, there’s seemingly little to love about San Francisco these days.

Once a haven for liberals, artists, and entrepreneurs, the Northern California city has become synonymous with soaring rents and mortgages, rampant crime, homelessness, and the highest office vacancy rates in the U.S. In April, the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board plainly declared that its business district was “at risk of collapsing.” Mayor London Breed told The New Yorker that she believes the city’s decline boils down to a problem of perception.

While politicians and civic groups are wrangling solutions, a coalition of local corporations launched a $4 million advertising campaign that they hope will help rescue the Golden City’s tarnished image. Comprised of executives from Bank of America, Uber, Deloitte, Visa USA, OpenAI, and the San Francisco Giants, among others, Advance SF believes that a rousing campaign could revive the city in the same way that “I ?? NY” became a cri de guerre during a similarly grim period in New York in the 1970s.

San Francisco’s 2023 battle cry: “It All Starts Here.”

The idea is to reassert the city as a place of possibility, explains Rich Silverstein, cochairman and partner of Goodby Silverstein & Partners, the agency selected to develop the campaign. “Tell me where Rolling Stone [magazine], the mountain bike, the skateboard, rock and roll, AI, or the computer began. The list goes on and on,” says Silverstein, who moved from New York to San Francisco in 2014. “I wanted to go to San Francisco because there seemed to be no judgment here—anything was possible. I still believe that spirit is here.”

“It All Starts Here,” rendered in the form of a stylized street sign, will appear on some 375 billboards, bus shelters, and posters across the city in time for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation held in San Francisco in November. Organizers are hoping the high-powered international gathering of government and business leaders helmed by President Joe Biden will cast a wide spotlight on their campaign.

The design of the “It All Starts Here” logo is serviceable—a play on the idea of intersections of cultures, proclivities, and disciplines in the famously liberal city. Designed by Benny Gold, Goodby Silverstein & Partners’ design director, the logo is as generic as it is legible—a sans-serif construction sans personality, perhaps by design. True to the reductionist branding design trend of recent years, the logo is essentially a machine-generated tag with its meaning derived from the messaging that accompanies it. Needless to say, it’s devoid of the quirky stand-alone charm of Milton Glaser’s “I ?? NY.”

The forgotten history of “I Love New York” 

Silverstein, who grew up in New York, naturally had the most successful city branding case study in mind while developing “It All Starts Here.” Hanging in his office is a framed print of the incendiary 1975 tabloid that spurred the “I ?? NY” campaign. “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” The Daily News’s paraphrasing of then-President Gerald Ford’s decision to withhold federal aid to the near-bankrupt city, stoked collective anger and got New York’s governor to retaliate with a communications campaign. (Ford, incidentally, denied ever saying those words and eventually signed a bailout package.)

As much as Glaser is credited as the hand behind “I ?? NY,” his widely appropriated logo is just one component of a statewide tourism campaign spearheaded by the ad agency Wells Rich Greene. Founded by Mary Wells Lawrence, the rare female ad executive of the Mad Men era, the agency produced a range of outdoor ads, television spots, and radio commercials shepherded by Creative Director Jane Maas. Many of them were set to a ditty composed by Steve Karmen, the so-called King of the Jingle.

In a 2017 interview, Glaser explained that “I Love New York” wasn’t so much a sales pitch as an expression of emotional truth. “There’s one essential thing that makes [the logo] more durable than other things. It is not a piece of advertising and it’s not intended to persuade. . . . [It’s] a reflection of what we were all feeling at the time,” Glaser said. “Here was the voice of the people. . . . One of the tools you have in communication is to create a sense of authenticity, especially now when no one believes anything.”

The late graphic designer demonstrated the efficacy of this strategy when he repurposed “I ?? NY” during the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. With the words More Than Ever below the logo, Glaser’s poster became a makeshift banner of steely affection for the devastated city.

Glaser’s portfolio also includes examples of failed attempts to export the magic of “I ?? NY” to other cities. Among his most controversial flops is the quixotic “Rhode Island: Cooler and Warmer,” a 2016 campaign that was ridiculed by locals. The criticism mostly centered on parachuting a famous designer to encapsulate a place he knew little about. 

Similarly, Silverstein says “It All Starts Here” comes from a place of rage. “I’m angry that the city has allowed itself to be less than what it could be. That’s what this whole group [Advance SF] is working on,” he says, underscoring that the campaign isn’t political.

“Advertising and marketing cannot fix the city by itself,” he adds. “This is just a spark.”

Truth and advertising

As advertising gurus know well, many torches are needed for a “spark” to catch fire. Listening to the campaign’s creators demur from political debates, one questions whether it’s ever really possible to engage in any creative civic campaign without reckoning with the hard truths of politics.

For instance, a moment of truth-telling for “It All Starts Here”: It’s not very easy to start a small business in San Francisco these days. The city is only just beginning to review the onerous requirements for getting a business permit. The reality is that despite the campaign’s happy vibes and feel-good slogan, it’s going to be hard to start any new enterprise here if the bureaucratic infrastructure doesn’t support it.

And that’s a crucial distinction between “It All Starts Here” and “I ?? NY.” New York’s campaign was unabashedly political. It was triggered by a political statement and was concocted by state officials working in tandem with creative professionals.

The campaign’s success arguably hinged less on the genius of its graphic design or catchiness of the commercials but more so on the creative team’s ability to navigate the political bureaucracy of that time. In the 2017 interview, Glaser explained that “I ?? NY” was actually a last-minute revision to an already approved design. He credits William Doyle, then deputy commissioner of the Commerce Department, for recognizing something in his new proposal, enough to call back the review committee.

“He actually reconvened this group of five, which is more of a job than one would think,” Glaser said. “That was probably the most difficult part of that job.”

“I ?? NY” also became a success because of its ubiquity. Whether the slogan “It All Starts Here” is as effective for San Francisco as “I ?? NY” was for New York City lies in how many times it’s echoed. Repetition, after all, is the first rule of advertising—and propaganda. As the maxim goes, “It’s not what you say, it’s how many times you say it.”