(St. Louis, MO) March 2011.
Looking out my home's windows, I see the same buildings and people I have for years. I am a proud St. Louisan of all our city has achieved. However, something is not the same... the feeling is elusive, but real. The brand reality for St. Louis has changed radically over the last 10 years. The biggest change? The takeover of Anheuser-Busch? The rise of Enterprise (car rental)? The death of the ad agencies? The loss of much of Mastercard? These are all strong changes, but do not tell the whole story. The threat comes from the outside as well as the inside (from our very region, country, and mindset).
St. Louis has been sidelined in global business, by-passed by not getting in earlier into global markets such as the UAE, China, Poland, India, etc. Staying the same has one great problem: it is deceiving... you seem to be moving forward but really you are being sucked down the drain. St. Louis is a great case in point: the world has bypassed it, and especially its businesses. And done so mercilessly. The biggest competitors are not our next door neighbors, but the hungry and greedy up-starts in India and China. Now, they are often the market dominators--just look at LCD, Plamsa, and LED technology. All owned and dominated by China.
Importantly, the upstarts-come dominators are now focusing all their efforts on another area to use to their advantage: Brand and Marketing prowess. If this one area of American and St. Louis expertise is lost, then we are in BIG TROUBLE and the future will be very bleak. St. Louis and its companies will fall into the empty basket of the past... and will be marginalized no end into a fourth-rate region. This in turn will impact our ability to raise investment both for Government as well as privately--which is already happening.
If the brand and marketing prowess we in St. Louis have built and perfected over the last 90 years becomes marginalized, then we as a community also become marginalized. Brands are too valuable to damage due to lack of vision.
Stefan Paul Jaworski (St. Louis, MO)
North America Director, SXTC
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