Golf
At the risk of sounding like a real sourpuss, this doesn't do much to assuage my suspicion that CLE+ is just becoming a code for "I'm a bourgeois assh*le."
posted by Christine Borne at 9:15 AM
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
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9 Comments:
yeech!
but then again, my idea of cleveland pride clothing is the sokolowski's t-shirt i got for christmas.
A true Clevelander wouldn't wear a Cleveland+ shirt ... Perhaps an old dirty Ghoulardi t-shirt bought a Big Fun, yes ... or a vintage beer-stained Browns jersey. But a yuppie Cleveland+ shirt? Yuck. Probably designed by some out-of-towners!
All three of you guys made me chuckle (Christine, thatgirl, and redbeard). I agree, marketing golf shirts seems pretty lame, especially with so much interesting marketing partnerships between edgy artists, sophisticated techies, and the CLE+ folks possible.
Then again, isn't the whole CLE+ thing bougie at core? I mean, we are talking about a marketing approach to improving a regional economy. Sure there is some trickle down to mid and small-size businesses, but mostly CLE+ is something of the NEO economic elite, by the NEO economic elite, and for the NEO economic elite.
Personally, I've often wondered if forcing such a regional perspective doesn't directly undermine attention to/efforts toward fixing local, city-specific, micro-problems.
But now we are way afield of the original golf shirt points. All of which, by the way, made me chuckle. :)
The golf balls themselves were just a tad over-the-top bougie. Whatever happened to t-shirts and tote bags? Or is that too PBS?
I have actually never set foot in the world of marketing or "regional branding" or whatever but coming from a writer's perspective, I think it's better to "show, not tell." Printing CLE+ on golf balls seems like telling. Maybe whoever is a marketer's target audience *likes* telling. I don't know.
I tell ya, if they weren't $33 a box, I might buy some and see what kind of creative uses I could put to them.
(btw, I know making fun of golf balls doesn't exactly fit my philosophy of "what would Bill Moyers say?" Bill Moyers would leave the golf balls alone. But hey, I'm not Bill Moyers.)
I would like a CLE / (Cleveland Divided) t-shirt...that's a little more appropos these days.
CLE+ is VERY bougie to me... especially when the average Cleveland person looks at me like I am from another planet when I say I live in Barberton.
i'm liking the ClevelandSGS spoof on this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/modestospeed
How about a shirt that reads:
Cleve/Land
to signify the east/west divide?
Cleve/Land - hey, that's good!
Perhaps a CLE+ belt buckle would be better? Oh, and don't forget that the marketing effort isn't just supposed to be for Cleveland, but for all of NEO. So the divide is even greater.
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