• The Geography Game

    Posted on December 22nd, 2005 by and currently 8 commenting.

    I’d like to open up the floor for discussion about the physical location of your business having an influence on whether or not you win new business. Why am I bringing this up? Because, even though we recently gained six new accounts, we lost two. And the reason we were given (we were told) was based solely on location.

    My best guess would be that it’s just a personal preference. Now I realize that Greenville, South Carolina isn’t the center of the world. But this is where we choose to live. Now before you roll your eyes, come visit. It’s as easy to get to as anywhere else in the US and you’d probably be surprised by what you find here, including BMW’s only manufacturing plant in the US and Michelin’s HQ, to name a few.

    But back to my question: Does location matter now that it’s 2006? We have clients from the West Coast to the Midwest to the Gulf Coast, yet this is a wall we still bump up against every now and again.

    I’d almost rather hear potential clients say that they just don’t like us instead of, “I went with someone closer to me.” Heck, one of our new clients told us that back in March, and then called us this week to turn the work over to us.

    So, should convenience win out over better thinking?

    P.S. I’m doing some traveling myself and heading to Texas for Christmas. I’ll start up the blog machine next week.

  • http://www.realtyfreak.com/ Evan

    Unless you are in logistics, location does not matter. I suppose that if all other things where equal I would stay local, but all other things are seldom equal.

  • http://www.orangeyeti.com/ Evan Tishuk

    It’s a big deal. I don’t care what anyone says about the world being flat. Greenville’s living costs are not as high as, say, Manhattan, so why aren’t more NYC businesses leveraging that disparity? Yeah, there are lots of reasons (culture, cost, comfort, experience, relationships, reputation, etc etc), but proximity plays a role in many of those factors and is a factor by itself. I shy away from using foreign outsourced programming labor. Because it takes more time to communicate and translate ideas and specs. I’d rather save the time and thought by communicating with someone who “gets it” (sees the bigger picture)…Someone or people I don’t have to dumb everything down for. Online collaboration (chat, blogs, wikis, skype, etc etc) have broken down some tremendous walls, but nothing really replaces the ability to communicate within the context of your own culture (or in person). Whether it’s between the Ukraine and the US or even if its between Greenville and NYC–there’s a noticeable, if not huge, difference.

  • http://thebrandbuilder.blogspot.com/ Olivier Blanchard

    If you really love grilled sardines, – which has NOTHING to do with the canned stuff – the best place in the world to order a plateful is at this little restaurant on Marguerite Island, just a quick ferry ride from Cannes, France. (Trust me on this.) Now… If a “French” restaurant opened up on Main Street and you found out that it offered grilled sardines, you’d probably want to try it, right? What are the odds that their sardines would be anywhere as good as the real thing? Pretty slim. So yeah, proximity is nice, but it is COMPLETELY irrelevant when it comes to substance. I’ll drive half-way across town for a good cup of coffee. I’ll fly half-way across the world to get a photo of a particular homeless guy on a particular sidewalk. Imagine the lengths I would go to to find the right talent to help me promote my company. When you’re looking for something special (and you find it), proximity doesn’t even enter the equation. Not now. Not in 2005… err… 2006. We live in a world where video conferencing, wireless telecoms and global overnight deliveries (Yay DHL) are commonplace. Selecting one agency over another just because it’s in your zipcode (or because it has a Madison Avenue address for that matter) is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. :D

  • Frank

    i hear the same story elsewhere… i remember hearing how a firm in burlington vt lost burton snowboard’s business because it “wasn’t cool” to do your advertising from anywhere that wasn’t urban. so who won the business? a firm in philadelphia. no offense to the philly folk, but it’s not like philadelphia is any cooler than burlington vt. probably on the contrary….

  • http://swampfoxinsights.blogspot.com/ John Warner

    Spike, I have visited lots of people all across the country, from Silicon Valley to Austin to New York, and have asked their impression of Greenville. For the most part I have found that it is not that they have a negative impression of us, they have no impression of us. We’re no where on their radar screen. It’s incumbent on us to define for them why they should care. What is globally distinctive about Greenville that they should pay attention to us versus anywhere else in the world? John

  • http://brainsonfire.com/blog Spike Jones

    Well spoken, John. Are you saying that Greenville has an identity awareness problem? Honestly, I think it’s the best-kept secret in the Southeast. I’ve lived in Dallas, Vail, Atlanta and Missouri and visited scores of other towns across North America. And Greenville is at the top of my list – like I said, I CHOOSE to live here. The majority of people who have no impression of Greenville are pleasantly surprised once they visit. And we constantly come across highly educated, highly skilled people who send us their resumes because they want to live here. I don’t want Greenville to be a Manhattan, or a LA, or an Austin. Those are all great places, but Greenville is Greenville because of what it is – because of what it does and does not offer. The best products and services (and places) don’t need an immense amount of awareness. People stumble on them and then can’t wait to tell others about it.

  • http://thebrandbuilder.blogspot.com/ Olivier Blanchard

    the key word in “best kept secret” is that last one: secret. It isn’t so much that Greenville has an identity awareness problem. It’s just that people don’t expect A-list creative thinkers to live here. Why? Because we just haven’t produced the string of high visibility hits that most people believe can only come from New York or LA. We’re still playing it safe, out here. The genie’s still in the bottle… waiting to be let out.

  • http://adpulp.com/ David Burn

    Having spent most of my ad career in second- and third-tier markets, this is an issue near-and-dear to me. Salt Lake, Denver and Omaha are all much bigger than Greenville, but still Nowheresville when it comes to advertising. One of my former colleagues in Denver is obsessed with helping turn Denver into the next Minneapolis. I wish him well. But it will never happen until the local business base chooses to stay home. And the fact is, brand managers at Denver’s big firms want the expertise they believe resides on the coasts. Many also want the travel perks–fine dining, $350/night Santa Monica hotels, shopping on Montana Ave., etc. I’ve been to Greenville and it’s an impressive small city. A city with deep roots in the ad biz. Henderson was the first agency outside New York or Chicago to be named “Agency of the Year” by Ad Age. But how many people know this? It reminds me of my time at Bozell Omaha. I’m from Omaha and I didn’t know Bozell was founded there in the 1920s, until my parents told me during a family reunion. Even then, I had to verify it, for it seemed unbelievable. No matter how much agencies in places like Greenville and Omaha achieve, many New Yorkers (and others) will remain biased and arrogant. That’s not something that can be overcome. So, I say let them go, Spike. And focus on what you can do for the companies who get you, get Brains and get Greenville.