The Global Drive for Talent - Clip 2: Transcript
Reality Check
RICHARD EDELMAN
Garrick, I think the mayor gave a very eloquent presentation this morning about why New York is such a magnet for talent. He said, you know, livability is the reason that people come here now, whether it's environment, education, economic opportunities, security, culture, the notion of being a cosmopolitan place. And, you know, his leadership has, you know, made a huge difference.
What I'd like to do, though, is to tell you that in my business you've got to look beyond the next year or two, look beyond the progress that's been made over the last seven years to just posit a couple of questions.
Question number one - are we going to have such a competent leader of this city in 2009? You could certainly suggest that we won't. We might. But 16 years of strong leadership does not mean that the next 8 years will necessarily have the same kind of leader.
Point number two, maybe more important for the New York City brand, is the extent to which brand America has overshadowed brand New York. And I would tell you, having come back from Dubai and Abu Dhabi a couple of weeks ago, we're not doing so well with the new rich. The newly-wealthy countries do not feel as comfortable in New York, not nearly, as they do in London or in Singapore or in Tokyo or in Shanghai. And I think that this is a very, very fundamental issue.
Now, how much can we control this? SARBOX, terrorism, you know, JFK coming in with your fingerprints. You know, there's some of this we can control and there's some of this we can't. But just to get some extent of the damage that happens from small things, President Bollinger's comments the other day at Columbia before the President of Iran spoke got all over the Middle East, way, way blown out of proportion, compared to the way, you know, it was covered here. But just understand that that's the sensitivity of the new rich countries.
And I want to bring up a third point. I think that New York's lack of prowess in the IT area is hurting the prognosis for the advertising and media business. There is a definite change in the weight towards the West Coast. Yes, it's true Google has a big presence in New York, but it's an ad sales office. It's a huge ad sales office, but it is not the center of the biz.
I'm not telling you that, you know, we're still not going to have the big networks and whatnot, but there's a dispersion of authority. You talked about dispersion of headquarters. There's a dispersion of authority in media.
Last point, when you think about areas in which we're not doing as well, environment. New York City, the congestion charge absolutely great, but we are certainly not seen as any kind of innovators in solar technology or any other thing - much more in Minneapolis, much more in Silicon Valley. It's much more top of mind.
I'm not suggesting that New York's not doing well as a brand. New York's made huge progress over the time, but I think we should look 10 years out and say, you know, do we need another, you know, I Love New York or whatever it is? We're doing wonderfully on tourism. But I think we have some areas in which we can do better to set the conditions for business 10 years out.