More than a search for more office space, experts say Amazon.com’s call for proposals for a second headquarters in North America is a brilliant marketing campaign and may well be the mother of all pitch competitions.
“It’s a ‘Shark Tank’ for cities,” said Janell Townsend, an Oakland University marketing professor. “We’ve seen the emergence of competition in all sorts of areas we really didn’t used to.”
Communities nationwide, including Detroit, are now in a flurry of dreaming, scheming and hoping as they seek to get Amazon’s attention and win its big prize: A $5-billion corporate headquarters with 50,000 jobs.
No matter how slim their chances, cities are rallying to submit proposals by the Oct. 19 deadline, and the biggest beneficiary is Amazon.
The online giant, Townsend said, can afford to do its own research on the cities where it might like to locate. But, she added, by having cities make pitches for it, the company is able to get a lot of creative ideas for free and generate “publicity like crazy.”
Many contenders
Since Amazon issued its HQ2 challenge, the list of cities seeking Amazon’s attention — and what they are willing to do to get it — has been growing.
In Michigan, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan has asked businessman Dan Gilbert, the founder of mortgage giant Quicken Loans and a major developer, to lead a team to pitch Detroit.
Grand Rapids wants the West Coast company to look at Michigan’s west side.
Southfield, a Detroit suburb, even managed to garner media coverage by announcing it, too, is entering the race and has the perfect — if not ironic — place for a headquarters: the defunct Northland mall set to be torn down.
Everyone, it seems, is wondering which city Amazon will pick.
Talk of HQ2 was a part of Gilbert’s news conference this month announcing his own projects.
He boldly called Detroit a “legit contender” and emphasized that an international pitch — if Windsor joined Detroit — would give the area an edge. He added: “That’s something nobody can compete with.”
Still, even as Detroit tries to convince the retail juggernaut to build a new headquarters here, Seattle is trying to keep the company there.
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, who became mayor after former mayor Ed Murray resigned last week amid sex-abuse allegations, issued an executive order setting up a task force to convince Amazon to build HQ2 in Seattle.
To boost its chances, Chicago — which got aircraft maker Boeing to move there from Seattle in 2001 — sent a 10-person team to Seattle to visit Amazon’s headquarters.
The delegation said it was seeking a first-hand look at Amazon.
Topping that, Gary, Ind., bought an ad in the New York Times. In a letter written as if the city were a person, it begged Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to give the community a chance.
“How are you?” the letter began. “My name is Gary and I am a legacy city in the northwest corner of Indiana. I was born in 1906 and my parents were Elbert Gary and U.S. Steel.”
Not to be outdone, Washington D.C. produced a 90-second video.
In it, Mayor Muriel Bowser read an article published in — what else? — the Bezos-owned Washington Post about the HQ2 competition. She flipped the newspaper pages.
“They want to be on the East Coast, right?” she said. Then added: “That makes sense. They have the West Coast Washington and the East Coast Washington.”
“Jeff owns a house here already,” she casually tossed in.
The mayor extolled the city’s virtues, and ended asking Alexa, Amazon’s automated personal assistant: “Where is the most interesting company in the world going to locate?”
Alexa replied: “Obviously, Washington D.C.”
‘Gets people talking’
To Robin Boyle, an urban planning professor at Wayne State University, Amazon’s contest is a way to get even more media attention and shape the way people think about the company.
“This thing has gotten a huge amount of coverage, but that’s what Amazon wants,” he said. “This is an opportunity to continue branding and expanding their name recognition into all elements in communities north, south, east, and west.”
Cynical thinking?
“Perhaps,” he said.
Still, he said, contests also tend to bring disparate groups together and excite people, even about things that are only tangentially related to a bid for Amazon’s headquarters.
Alexander Pollock, a Detroit architect and city planner for 42 years, sees the Detroit pitch — whether his hometown wins the competition or not — as a chance for Detroit to discuss big ideas.
His idea: sustainable energy generated by the Detroit River.
“It gets people talking,” Boyle added. “You can see it negatively — or you can see it positively.”
