The paint, or chalk, or whatever it was, is almost gone now, but, a week or so ago, someone wrote “LGBT” on the sidewalk in front of my house. I’m still not sure what to make it of it, but here are a few theories that I’ve considered, starting with ones that I think are least likely.

1. I’m being outed as a homosexual… As I’m not a homosexual, I think this scenario is unlikely. But, then again, there is footage on the internet of me in bed with a large Jordanian bartender. Regardless, though, if someone had wanted to expose me as gay, I think that they would have chosen to use a term a little more inflammatory than “LGBT”. At least I can’t remember the last time a bigot was caught spraying something other than “gay” or “faggot” on the property of a gay couple. It would be like if a Klansman spray painted “African American” on the side of someone’s house.

2. “LGBT” doesn’t stand for “Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender” at all, but some kind of LOL-like leetspeak acronym, like “Laughing at your Great Blog Tonight.” Is that a thing? If not, why not?

3. It’s not me that it’s about at all, but someone else in my family… or, more likely, all of us. What if the “LGBT” indicated that our household had one of each? What if the graffiti was meant to identify us as winners in some kind of sexual Yahtzee – four people, each identifying with one letter of “LGBT”? I know it’s unlikely in our case, as the kids are just kids, but I like the idea that somewhere in town there’s a house with a gay man, a lesbian woman, a bisexual, and someone who identifies as transgender. And I like the idea of them winning something for that achievement, even if it’s just a chalked “large straight” on their front doorstep… which would be kind of ironic, wouldn’t it?

4. There’s a new gay gang in town, and they’re marking their turf in violet chalk.

5. It’s a sign indicating to other LGBT folks that we’re friendly, kind of like how Depression era hobo’s would scratch signs into people’s fences and the like to indicate to their fellow tramps where they might find a “kindhearted lady,” a sandwich, or medical assistance.

And it’s that last one that I’m going with. Whether it’s what actually happened or not, I like the idea that our house was identified as one in which all people, regardless of sexual orientation, might get a fair shake… Maybe not a free sandwich, but at least a fair shake.

Every once in a while, though, the planets align on a slow news day, and something that you’ve written escapes the gravitational pull of Ypsilanti, and breaks free. Generally speaking, it happens about once or twice a year for me. Every six months or so, I’ll string together the right series of words, and, for whatever reason, this little strand of DNA that I’ve concocted will successfully burrow itself into the mucous membrane of popular culture, where its cells begin rapidly dividing, and it takes on a life of its own. It happened that time that I wrote about wanting to take Robert DeNiro, who was living in a trailer outside of my house at the time, out for a drink. And it happened, not too long ago, when I mentioned the fact that my great-aunt had her savings stolen by the father of Miss America. “Breaking through” can mean a lot of things. Sometimes it means huge readership numbers, and sometimes it just means reaching someone interesting who I wouldn’t normally reach. Not too long ago, a mention on Reddit translated to 40,000 readers in one day. But, as not one of them left a comment, at least as far as I can tell, or went on to do anything with the information that they’d been exposed to here, I don’t know that I’d consider it a success.

For me, contributing a single quote to an article about Michigan on Rachel Maddow’s website is a bigger deal, even if it doesn’t translate to more readers. It means that I’ve been successful, in some little way, in getting a message out to the world about what’s going on here. (Blogging is like throwing a message in a bottle out into the sea every day, and waiting to see if anything comes back.) In and of itself, a fleeting mention on Maddow’s website may not have that much of an affect, but I’d like to imagine that there’s a cumulative impact. Maybe, in some tiny way, I think, I’m helping shift public opinion, making it more likely that progressives across the country will contribute money to the campaigns of our local candidates (like Syed Taj), and making it clear to our leaders in Lansing that they’re being watched. Personally, the local victories are more rewarding, but I like knowing that, every once in a while, I can kick a bigger hornets’ nest.

And that’s kind of what happened a few days ago, when I channeled my righteous indignation toward the administration in Lansing for their blatant politicization of the Pure Michigan campaign. Not only did I find the politics behind the ad that ran in the Wall Street Journal objectionable, but, as a marketing person, it pissed me off that they’d sullied what had been a valuable brand. In our highly-partisan world, Pure Michigan had been something that we all seemed to be able to agree upon. Despite all the other bullshit, we knew we could all come together and say, “Damn, we live in a big, beautiful state.” But, the Snyder administration, when they decided to use the Pure Michigan campaign as a platform from which to push their corporatist right-to-work agenda, screwed all of that up. They made Pure Michigan a joke when they posted that ad in the Wall Street Journal, proudly declaring that union-busing was “Pure Michigan.” And, then, as if that weren’t enough, they went a step further, saying that we were witnessing a “perfect storm” in Michigan, not realizing, apparently, the connotation of that phrase. Well, I ranted, a lot of you joined me in visually exploring the new reality of “Pure Michigan”, and a bunch of other folks, with much larger audiences, like Eclectablog, The Huffington Post, Deadline Detroit, MLive, Michigan Radio, the Detroit Free Press, and NPR’s Marketplace, began asking questions.

I don’t know that I was the first to start kicking up a fuss, as I suspect that someone was likely pissed off about it before I was, but, as all of that media coverage that I just mentioned came after I issued my fatwā, I have to think that I contributed toward producing the high pressure system that led to the tsunami. And, while I’m still pissed off at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) for forcing Pure Michigan to jump the shark, I also have a certain sense of satisfaction for having played a part. I mean, it’s not very often that Governors are asked to comment on things that were written by angry, middle-aged men in their pajamas. (The Governor, by the way, says that he didn’t know anything about the ad that ran in the Wall Street Journal.) Speaking of the official take on all of this, Mike Finney, the CEO of the MEDC, released the following in response to the public outcry..

As for the future of the Pure Michigan campaign, I doubt this recent dust-up will have any long term negative impact. If the brand were to suffer, and hurt Michigan’s tourism industry, I might feel bad about having played a role. As it is, though, I feel pretty good about the way things worked out. If nothing else, the administration knows that we’re paying attention… and that, if pushed, we can create kick-ass memes.

update: Eclectablog and the Huffington Post are now on the case as well.

MARK: I’m not sure if you want for it to be public knowledge, but you’ve mentioned to me before that over half of your sales are non-alcohol, which, I suspect, isn’t something that you were anticipating when you opened a bar right across the street from Eastern Michigan University. Has that been the biggest surprise, or are there other, more significant, things that have caught you off-guard this first year in business?

JESSE: Well, honestly, everyday I’m caught off guard by something. That’s the restaurant business. As for the breakdown between alcohol and food, the other restaurant that I operate (Kelley’s Island House in Ohio) does about the same in terms of food-to-drink sales, and it’s more geared toward food culture, than the beverage side of things. I do feel that we are more unique as a bar in that we sell a lot more food than anticipated, but we also put a lot more effort into the food than we do into the beverage side. I mean, most of the work in pouring a craft draft is done by the brewery and the distributor before it even hits our draft system. I expected the food side to get where it is eventually, but it’s nice to see the hard work our kitchen crew delivers getting acknowledged so rapidly.

MARK: Did you bring your kitchen crew with you from Ohio, or are they all locals? And, if they are from here, how hard was it to build that team from scratch?

JESSE: Every year, the Island restaurant, which is seasonal, has a crew that’s about 80% new. This past year, we brought anyone (from Wurst Bar) that wanted to go with us and experience island life, and we returned with an Ohioan, Brigid, our Island House floor manager. So, whatever employees want to go with us to either place are more than welcome to. As for building the place from scratch every year, that’s been a great learning curve; in the past 5 years, we have basically opened 6 times from scratch between the two places. We opened Wurst Bar in 15 days, including remodeling and menu design. If you take out the remodeling, I think we have the process down to 6 days at this point. 6 days and hundreds of gray hairs.

MARK: As someone who finds business strategy unusually interesting, it’s been fun watching you change things up, and try new things. I was surprised, for instance, when $18 lobster rolls showed up as a special on the Wurst Bar menu. It’s not something that I would have expected, given the local economy. As they keep coming back, though, I’m guessing that you’ve found that there’s an untapped market for upscale fare. Now that you’ve established that, what’s next?

JESSE: Well, we sell a ton of lobster rolls in Ohio, and it was one of the most well-received specials that we ran, which is how it ended up on the menu. The lobster itself costs us around $25 a pound, not including the rest of the plate, so there’s a lot of risk in carrying an item like that unless it’s selling well. Since that worked, though, we’ve done a few “chef takeover” diners. They’ve been taking place the last Monday of each month… we let a different chef take over the kitchen, or Chef Klenotic spearheads something. Those takeovers really do well for us. The last one we had was mostly seafood-based, and we ended up selling way more steak than crab or raw oysters! A few weeks ago we ran a series of burgers that cost over $15 and included ingredients like duck fat, escargot and smoked goose skin, and we flew through those specials. So, there is definitely an upscale foodie presence in the area. I am not sure, though, that there is enough of one to base a business model on just yet, but there are definitely some Ypsilanti residents who don’t mind paying the extra money to get rare, or hard-to-make/source foods.

MARK: What can you tell us about Chef Klenotic? What’s his background?

JESSE: Chef Dan is an amazingly talented young chef that originally got into food by watching the Food Network, and got into the restaurant business as a dishwasher, eventually training under a chef in the Upper Peninsula. Then, he continued on in several Ann Arbor restaurants until he fell in with us. He has a great palate. If I were to have to describe the fine dining menu that he does for us in Ohio, I would have to say that the food follows the New Americana style, and his palate is based heavily in a fusion of Southeast Asian and Classic French cooking, like that of Julia Child.

MARK: I noticed a few changes when I was in last weekend. In addition to getting rid of the meat cooler at the front of the restaurant, and laying the groundwork for what looks like some significant renovation, it appears as though you’ve also gotten rid of the foosball table. I might be reading too much into the loss of the foosball table, but I’m guessing that its removal speaks to the fact that you’re shifting a little further across the continuum, away from the stereotypical college bar. Would I be right about that? Is this about making more room to accommodate sit-down diners?

JESSE: Well, the foos table just kept breaking… then the company we rented it from came and pulled it out one day without ever even mentioning it. So, I’m not really sure what the deal was there. I suppose having to constantly fix a foosball table that we don’t charge for is a pain in the rear, but, at the same time, you can’t expect that free games in a bar are going to be respected by every customer. As for the customer base, we’re not really moving along any continuum, but there is an end goal that we have in mind as far as the building design is concerned, and, toward that end, a construction application with the city is imminent for our new bathrooms… The crowd that comes in is very eclectic and, at any given time, there could be a table of grand parents sitting between some collegiate athletes and a group of local artists.

MARK: Is local competition beginning to step up a bit? I could be wrong about this, but, for instance, it seems to me that I’ve seen other bars start to do “tap takeovers,” where you have a particular brewery take over all of your taps for a predetermined period of time, since you introduced the concept locally. (I realize that bars elsewhere have been doing it, but, as far as I know, the Wurst Bar was the first place that I’d seen do it in Ypsi.)

JESSE: I think we covered competition in the last interview, and my opinion hasn’t really changed. I do not think that there is any competition in Ypsilanti – the market is still under developed and under appreciated in my opinion. A lot of the businesses in the area do share a lot of the same customers, but every additional business that offers something unique also adds to the quality of the entire neighborhood. This is not an area that has hit any saturation point, and, if another restaurant opened and we lost business, I would start heavily critiquing how I was approaching customers rather than think that they were being taken away. We still continually get customers that drive in to check us out from Birmingham, Royal Oak and Beverly Hills because of something they saw online. I think that’s great for other places as well. I live and work here in Ypsilanti and I would be pretty hard pressed to continue doing so if there were not other places to eat and socialize such as Sidetrack, Beezy’s or Red Rock.

MARK: On January 7, you’re set to begin late-night delivery service of brats and beer. What kind of market research did you do before deciding that this was something that you wanted to try, or was it just something that you felt might have promise… and didn’t require a lot of up-front investment?

JESSE: We don’t cater to the minors after 10:00 PM, as I feel it’s important to segregate the under-age population in a place where alcohol is served after the evening sets in. I do not, however, enjoy cutting them off from the food, so this offers a way for the younger population around here to still have access to our menu, if they get a late night craving for some of our food.

MARK: Are there plans afoot to open other Wurst Bars? I seem to recall there being talk about something in Ohio.

JESSE: Sure, we talk about it. The concept has been very well received and having another one an appropriate distance away would be something we’re interested in, but we haven’t really perfected everything in this location yet. Ask me again when we’ve upgraded the facade and the restrooms are new!

MARK: What’s been your biggest loser so far, brat-wise? Did any meat combinations just not work?

JESSE: So far, it’s all worked. We have tweaked some of the names, though. Our menu is small enough that most of the items we put on it have been dragged across at least a few different taste buds, and have been received well, but, when they’re not selling for us, we can keep the same recipe and just change the name. The Chicken Sausage Sandwich, for instance, became the Jerked Chicken Sausage Sandwich, which in turn became the Sweet n Spicy Chicken Sandwich… Not one of the 20 plus ingredients that go into the patty or the pepper coulis topping has changed, but the item definitely sells the best as the Sweet n Spicy Chicken Sandwich. I would have taken it off altogether, but I’m confident when I say that it’s one of my favorite menu items. (I literally just ate one for lunch.) We’ve reformatted the menu a few times, and stopped using fruit as an identifier when naming our sausages, although they’re often listed in the ingredients. All of the changes we’ve made were to help us showcase what we’d already identified as an item which should be well-received and unique.

MARK: When I talked with you a year ago, you said that you were going to attempt sourcing 85% of your raw ingredients from local manufacturers and distributors. How close have you come to meeting that goal? And, are there items that you’d like to find locally that you just haven’t been able to?

JESSE: Well, two menu printings ago, we used the back of the menu like a NASCAR, shamelessly advertising all of the local companies that we use for meats, and what not. Today, we source almost everything that we carry from local companies such as Frog Holler, Zingerman’s, Ferrari & Sons, Red Goose Spice Company and Sparrow Meats. And we use Michigan-based Green Safe for all of our paper products, and occaisionally have the Ypsi Food Coop order dry goods for us. We use Northern Haserot as our dry goods supplier and where we can not source locally with quality, such as hard cheeses, exotic meats and pantry goods. So, overall we are definitely locally sourced. I would be a lot happier if more farms were accessible to us (we locally get rabbit and duck as well), and I would love to have more involvement with the farm side of food, but there just has not been time to make those relationships yet.

MARK: You were nice enough, a few months ago, to sit down with a person that I know who has a food cart business in Ann Arbor and tell her what, from your perspective, it takes to be successful a restaurant owner in Ypsilanti. As I suspect that there are other would-be restauranteurs in the audience, I was hoping that perhaps you could share some of those same thoughts now… What are the top three pieces of advice you’d give someone thinking about opening a restaurant in Ypsilanti?

JESSE: Well, my business partner Jim would say: location, location, location, sign… I agree with that, and I would add that, regardless of where you wanted to open your business, if you want to be successful, you need to have a drive and passion for food and service. That’s the core. Someone who is disinterested in meeting new people every day is going to find this business a hard place to hang their hat. In the same respect, I think that emerging into any aspect of this business while television shows like Bar Rescue and Chopped are mainstream, you should have a passion and base of knowledge that is ever expanding through the discovery new foods and experimenting wildly within that knowledge.

MARK: I’m not sure I get your reference to Bar Rescue and Chopped. Are you saying that people are getting into the business, thinking that they’re ready for anything, because they’ve seen these food-based “reality” shows, but that you need to actually put in the time, understand food, develop your palate, etc.?

JESSE: No, not at all… I am specifically referring to our customers. It seems to be the trend that more and more people are watching and learning about food service and the culinary arts through television, blogs and social media. A few generations ago, families were passing on casserole recipes, and now they’re trying to find shishito peppers at the market to try and recreate something from their Bon Apetit subscription. So, I am saying that, as business owners and chefs, there has to be a constant desire to learn and grow in this field, or you’ll get lost in the mix, and forgotten about pretty rapidly.

MARK: You mentioned new bathrooms. Are the trough urinals on their way out? And, if so, what happens to retired trough urinals? Is there an after-market?

JESSE: They are on the way out! It has taken us a bit longer than we thought to get to the bathrooms, but I am getting ready to take drawings over to Ypsilanti’s building department in about 10 days. Hmmm… what could we do with the trough urinals? I guess we could always put them out back and start some sort of a garden.

MARK: Would the Health Department frown on salad greens grown in a retired urinal?

JESSE: Not if we call it recycled art.

MARK: How’s the lunch market? Have you been able to draw people over from the EMU campus, or does the fact that you’re a “bar” keep you from making inroads into the mid-day market?

JESSE: Lunches are a lot slower than dinner, but, as we constantly change and evolve to meet our customers demands, we have started working out some plans to drive lunch business to us. We will likely expand our delivery service over the next few weeks depending on the response it gets in the evening, and that should enhance our lunch reach.

MARK: Other than planning to expand delivery with the bratmobile, what else have you done to drive business during lunch?

JESSE: Advertising mostly… other than that I feel like lunch business is getting people in and out rapidly. There was a huge curve to cooking sausages from raw and getting them out in a rapid manner, especially early in the day, when our old grill was still starting to build heat. Even if you just take a raw Johnsonville Brat from the pack and grill it at home you’ll be looking at an 18-20 minute cooking time. When we started, it was taking about 17 minutes to cook our house-made brats, and then you add in the ordering time, and the part where the waitstaff is getting drinks. When you put it all together, there was easily a 20-30 minute time period between walking in the door and starting to eat. I would say most people don’t want to wait that long for the product that we’re serving, nor do they have that long for lunch, once you include traveling. So, getting the cooking times down by adjusting our methods and getting new equipment in, we’ve been able to drastically change the pace of our food service over the course of the year, and that’s starting to be reflected in our lunch service now.

MARK: Do you think, after a great many years of under-performance, that the Cross Street corridor might finally be turning a corner? And, if not, is there a particular kind of business that you think, if it were added to the mix, might make the difference? Is there, in other words, a niche that’s not being filled, that could really help pull students from the University?

JESSE: The more businesses that open and become successful along the corridor will, of course, improve the street. I don’t think that the type of business will matter as much as the construct in which it exists. For instance, there is a Sweetwaters going in a few doors down from us, and, from what I’ve seen at their Ann Arbor location, they invest a lot of effort in maintaining integrity and quality in the products that they serve. Getting a few more businesses into the area like that will not only bring students off campus, but they will bring students TO campus! EMU has a lot to offer, but one thing that is severely lacking is a “university town” type setting surrounding the campus, like you find in Ann Arbor, and pretty much any other town in the United States that has a college. That’s a big factor that a lot of potential students take into consideration when choosing a college. Frankly, I’m surprised that EMU is not bending over backwards to get as many potentially high quality and student-friendly businesses into the area as possible.

MARK: The history is interesting. After some brief flirtations with the City, during which they, for instance, constructed the Business School on Michigan Avenue, my sense is that the EMU administration made a conscious decision to pull away from the City, focusing all of their construction on the other side of campus. Personally, I think they’re afraid of the City. I think that’s why they built their new Student Center where they did, and why, a few years ago, they attempted to close College Place, the main thoroughfare connecting the campus with the City. It’s incredibly shortsighted, but I believe they think that bad things will happen if their students leave campus. Hopefully, however, that begins to change with the improvement of Cross Street. The bottom line is that the City can’t be successful without the University, and the University can’t be successful without the City. The sooner everyone realizes that, the better…. So, is there anything else that you’d like to say that I haven’t asked you about?

JESSE: I dont think so, you’re a very detailed interviewer. Thanks again for the opportunity to have a voice on your great blog.

[Now get over to the Wurst Bar, and wish Jesse and the staff a happy anniversary.]

The campaign, waged on behalf of the Bank of Ann Arbor by the folks at the local ad firm Perich and Partners, evolved from a social media experiment coordinated by Perich that got off the ground about a year ago. Word was put out though Facebook, and various other channels, that prizes were to be had for those who could come up with witty ways to complete the phrase, “Non-local banks think…” (The winner of the competition, by the way, was the Mani Osteria one, which I noted above.) The bank, it would seem, liked the response, and invested in the launch of a billboard campaign. (Earlier permutations, which I apparently didn’t take notice of, just included these phrases, sans giant head, on the same field of bright green.) And, at some point, it would seem, a decision was made to up the ante and incorporate a character to personify this pathetically out-of-touch pansy of a New York banker.

Here’s an example of the final product.

I’d been thinking about writing something about the campaign for a while, but I lacked a hook… until a few days ago, when local illustrator and marketeer Dustin Krcatovich began publicly jamming the campaign by way of Facebook.

Before we go any further, I’d like to say that I would much rather that you did business with Bank of Ann Arbor than with Chase or Bank of America. (Or, even better yet, you could move your money to a credit union.) This post isn’t intended, at least from my perspective, to be an attack on Bank of Ann Arbor, which I’m sure is a great company with a demonstrated interest in making our region successful. And, actually, to be honest, it’s not even really an negative critique of this campaign, which I recognize may very well have served its purpose, even if I find it a bit annoying for it’s saccharine, self-congratulaory tone. I just wanted to open a thread where people could discuss the campaign openly.

Now, with that said, here’s one of the images that Dustin produced. This one, I think it’s pretty clear, was created in reaction to the fact that the illustration in question was produced by a non-local firm. (Perich outsourced the work to New York firm J. J. Sedelmaier Productions, Inc.) The second, seen further down, I’m guessing, is in reference to that non-so-advertising-friendly chapter of Ann Arbor’s history which unfolded on the campus of U-M about 20 years ago, when GG Alin came to visit and fling his shit from the stage of the Half Ass.

Well, I caught up with Dustin last night, and asked him a few questions. Here’s our exchange.

MARK: Your primary issue with the ad, I take it, is that the illustration was created by a non-local company, which is odd at best, and hypocritical at worst, given that the whole subtext of the campaign is that one should do business locally. Is that right?

DUSTIN: To be fair, I didn’t know at first that Perich had created the initial campaign, but, yes, they hired J.J. Sedelmaier (of Saturday Night Live’s TV Funhouse and a bunch of other stuff like that) to design the character.

MARK:Before we go any further, what do you think of the campaign, putting aside the fact that the character was designed by a New York-based company?

DUSTIN: I think it’s utter pandering. It doesn’t reflect the greater Ann Arbor community’s interest, first of all, but it’s also just tacky and pointless.

MARK: Given that people… including you and me… are talking about the campaign, do you think the folks at Bank of Ann Arbor and Perich see it as a success?

DUSTIN: I think it’s a successful campaign in terms of drawing attention, but also in drawing ire, so I’m not sure how that helps them increase their market share.

MARK: Any chance you might go out and try to put up a billboard of your own, or alter one of theirs? Like the one with that you produced with the non-local banker eating human feces?

DUSTIN: I would love to, given the funding. I wouldn’t want to get into legal trouble in order to do it, though, so I probably wouldn’t go the Banksy route, but I’m all for beating the corporate drones at their own game, given the opportunity.

MARK: Is he consuming the poop in your image? He doesn’t look too happy about it. He looks kind of like he’s thinking, “Eating that poop could have been a mistake.”

DUSTIN: Well, that’s up for debate. I’ve been going back and forth on whether he was just performing exceptionally messy analingus, or actually consuming it.

MARK: Is your sense that it’s drawn ire in a broad sense, across a number of demographics? I wonder, in other words, if it’s just the hipster intelligensia that finds it offensive.

DUSTIN: To be fair, I’m insulated in a very particular milieu that includes a lot of disgruntled artists who could’ve whipped up something better in half an hour.

MARK: A better version of the character, or a better campaign?

DUSTIN: While I’m sure some of the target demographic of yuppie goons find the campaign charming, I do think most probably find it irritating and pandering. People trust bankers like they trust politicians, and with good cause. Even if they know who Mayer Hawthorne is (appropriately enough, an EX-Ann Arborite is namedropped to promote localism), where’s the one about Iggy Pop?

MARK: For those folks in the audience who aren’t aware, Dustin is referencing the BOAA billboard which says, “Non-local bankers think Mayer Hawthorne is running for re-election”… So, back to your work, do I sense a Kickstarter campaign in the future?

DUSTIN: Hmmmm… worth considering. I might want to get a posse together first.

MARK: Let’s brainstorm for a moment. What, in your mind, would have been a better direction for them to have taken? Remember, they’re trying to get through to the older business owners among us, and those of us with considerable financial holdings? Too edgy probably wouldn’t work. And something more safe… like a traditional campaign focusing on the happy faces of their clients… probably wouldn’t break through in the way that they were hoping. They were in kind of a tough spot, right?

DUSTIN: True story. I play a major role in the “social media” marketing for two local companies (Encore Records and Saagara, plus my own extracurricular work with FM DUST), so I do sympathize with that tightrope walk. My uncomfortable relationship with the capitalist system as such puts me in an awkward position to comment, and I can definitely see where BOAA and Perich were coming from in their campaign, but I retain that it has manifested itself as tacky and cloying, like a kid who’s trying to prove that he’s into cool stuff by gratuitously dropping band names into conversation.

MARK: Closing thoughts?

DUSTIN: On a certain level, it seems silly to pick on specific advertisers/advertising campaigns. Businesses pay advertising and marketing firms a lot of money to fuck with your head and lie to you. They hire psychologists to determine what color schemes are most likely to lull you into the sort of mood that might make people more sympathetic to your product. It’s a sick world, through and through. Why single anyone out?

Answer: because it’s fun, and it’s funny.

Thus, what will be a continuing string of pieces created by myself, designed to pick apart and undercut The Bank Of Ann Arbor’s grossly hypocritical, cloying, and just generally lame “non-local banker” (NLB) campaign. Sure, Nike’s more evil, Wal-Mart’s more insidious and creepy, Bongz And Thongz is more trashy, but none of these have more cluelessly tried to use viral marketing techniques and collegiate-friendly imagery (J.J. Sedelmaier was likely chosen to convey some of the perceived “hipness” that comes along with the Saturday Night Live connection) to forward their dubious agenda, all while exploiting the current trend of localism. It’s cheap, it’s tacky, and as I said earlier, it’s hypocritical.

Let’s go ahead and put aesthetic qualms aside a moment, and focus on the hypocrisy of the thing. Lip service to localism doesn’t do anyone any good without spending the money in the community to back up your firm’s claims. It makes Bank Of Ann Arbor (as well as Perich) look deceitful, bloated, and out of touch, no matter how many local names they drop. Why not hire a local artist like Jeremy Wheeler, Nate Higley, or the team at VGKids to design the non-local banker, and put your money in the same vicinity as their mouth? There are tons of local artists, animators, etc. who would be happy for the work, and it would actually give credence to BOOA’s claims of being region-centric.

Obviously, BOAA is a regional business, and it’s still probably better to put your money there than, say, Chase or Bank Of America. That said, their arrogance in exploiting the community’s interest in “keeping it local” while thinking that the community wouldn’t notice that the whole campaign is a bunch of (to take a bar from the Joe Biden songbook) “malarkey” is something that they deserve to be shamed for.

On a lighter note: the ad campaign is obnoxious, unfunny, and by now, stretched thinner than the new design for Minnie Mouse. I’d be lying if I said that any sociopolitical criticism is slightly undercut by my general impatience for how tired I am of their stupid joke.

In a closing note, I should say that Jeremy Wheeler inspired me to do these, as he’s been using the non-local banker in some recent fliers. He did it first. Or, at least, he did it before me. Credit where credit is due.

MARK: How about using the same image of the guy, only having a tag line saying, “This man will kill you in your sleep if you bank with Citibank?” Could you get behind something like that?

DUSTIN: Give me a half hour, and I’ll one-up that. That general idea, though, I could get behind.

For what it’s worth, Bank of Ann Arbor seems to be doing really well these days, as are local banks in general. The numbers I’m finding don’t quite jive, but they all seem to indicate incredible growth. According to an article published by Crain’s in May, the bank had “grown total assets to a record $792 million and grew net income in the quarter to nearly $2 million from $1.3 million in the same quarter last year.” The industry magazine American Banker, however, in an article about the non-local banker campaign, says the company has $1.4 billion in assets. Regardless of the number, the company is doing extremely well, and I think that speaks well for the future of our local business ecosystem… except, I guess, for illustrators.

UPDATE: This conversation took a very strange turn online, with Bank of Ann Arbor employee and local concert promoter Matthew Altruda exchanging increasingly pointed comments with WCBN volunteer Jason Voss over their competing visions of the local music scene. Much of the debate, which took place largely on Facebook, has since been removed, but some evidence of the exchange, including Altruda’s letter to WCBN management, asking for Voss’s immediate dismissal, can be found in the comments thread of this post.

Here’s their call for submissions.

…What is design? A universal language? A problem solving tool? Your obsession? This is your opportunity to show the Detroit design community what design means to you. All you have to do is design a poster that fills in the blank: Design is ______________.

I don’t know how many people entered the competition. I’ve spent the past several minutes looking around the web, and, while I was able to find several responses to the question posted on the Detroit Design Festival’s Facebook page, I was only able to find evidence of one poster actually having been submitted. I did, however, come across what I’m assuming was a non-official submission while walking around Detroit this weekend. I found the following plastered onto the side of an abandoned building near the offices of the Heidelberg Project on Saturday, while hopscotching with my daughter.

This message isn’t anything new. I’ve heard it said before, several times, in different ways, in different contexts. For as long as I can remember, for instance, I’ve heard people saying, “Advertising exists in oder to convince people that they desperately need things which they could easily live without.” It only makes sense that someone would extend it from advertising to design. But, I loved the context of this, as it was right outside one of the stops on the Detroit Design Festival itinerary, and thought that I’d share it. As someone who appreciates good design, I don’t know that I agree, but I certainly think it’s worth discussing.

So, is design, like advertising, evil?

[Tonight's post was brought to you by the new iPhone 5. Order yours today!]

The conversation which followed Ben’s presentation jumped all over the place, as people in the audience, which numbered about 75, discussed everything from personal stories about having gone to prep school with Mitt Romney, to police violence against people of color in Oakland. The most interesting thing, for me, was the discussion on whether or not the local business movement should align itself with the people in the streets, fighting against the forces of corporate America. There was talk of BALLE member businesses putting “We support the 99%” decals on their doors. Some in the audience thought that it would be a great idea to declare solidarity with the movement. Others thought that it might negatively impact the burgeoning localist movement. One woman, while clearly sympathetic to the Occupy movement, suggested that small business owners are making significant progress in the fight against corporate America, and doesn’t want to jeopardize that. As long as we’re all moving in that direction, she argued, we don’t have to be overt in our intentions.

Regardless of whether or not BALLE members decide to act on Cohen’s suggestion, and use their stores as distribution centers for the roll-out of marked bills, it occurs to me that there may be opportunities to leverage the BALLE membership, which now includes some 22,000 independently-owned, place-based, values-minded businesses across North America. I’m not sure what it would look like, but I’ve got to think that there are opportunities not only to lobby Congress, but to get messages out quickly, through the network, to millions of customers. My thoughts on this are still forming, but it seems as though, now that the infrastructure is built, it might be worth exploring the possibilities. For instance, assuming the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act later this summer, wouldn’t it be cool if all of the people working at BALLE member businesses wore “Put Single-Payer Health Care Back on the Table… And Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution” t-shirts? (I’m convinced that, if we had national health care, and people were no longer terrified of being uninsured, that tens of thousands of people would leave their jobs working for big firms, and start businesses of their own.) It’s not an overtly political message, but I think that it could have a pretty big impact. And that’s just one example. I’m sure there are dozens more.

More on the BALLE conference tomorrow.

Oh, and Cohen gave us all ice cream after he spoke… He must travel tons of the stuff.

It would be one thing if I could remember what I’d written, but I can’t. I couldn’t recreate it in a week. I mean, I can remember bits and pieces of it, but I don’t know how I’d woven them all together. I know, for instance, that I started off by talking about the guys with the tattooed faces and the other people in Zuccotti Park who, in my opinion, are capable of impeding progress. I know I suggested doing something about them, and I know that it made a great deal of sense to me at the time, but I can’t remember what it was. (It’s possible that I proposed buying them out, like the union auto workers.)

For the record, I agree with Chris Hedges when he says that the success of the movement thus far is probably in large part due to its leaderless, rule-by-consensus nature. I also think, however, that what’s worked thus far may not continue to work in the future, as we move into the legislative arena. Sooner or later, I suspect, this entity known as OWS is either going to have to evolve or die. And I think, given the fact that there’s now money on the table, that transition time is fast approaching… Oh, and I remember linking to this clip from the Huffington Post in hopes of illustrating that fact:

…This is what I have witnessed at Zuccotti the past few nights. On Thursday, the matter at hand was a proposal from Pulse — the group of drummers — for $8,000 for new musical instruments. They say they hoped to secure the funding after a $5,000 handmade drum was sabotaged and destroyed during a rain storm. They say that because they’ve been there since Day 1, they deserve the funding more than anyone.

“We have worked for you! Appreciate us!” the leader of the proposal shouted angrily to the (general assembly) in response to voices of dissent.

After a long debate, the proposal was tabled. No funding for the drummers. After the meeting, one drummer cursed and yelled at GA members for their decision. He confronted another occupier and the two shouted obscenities back and forth; a physical fight nearly erupted but a peacemaker came between them…

As I recall, I wasn’t calling for anything as drastic as the Night of the Long Knives. I wasn’t suggesting that people be dragged away in the night, never to be seen again. I think, instead, I offered some suggestions as to how some of these people on the fringe could be refocused. And that, I think, is where I brought up the Netflix analogy. Basically… and you’ll have to believe me when I tell you that I did this extremely well… I made the case that OWS needed to be split in half, with one group developing a coherent, simple and comprehensive agenda for change, while the other continued to spread across the nation as a kind of angry yet fun street party. And, toward that end, I tried to apply some lessons from the Netflix experience, when it tried, unsuccessfully, to spin off its DVD-by-mail service a few weeks ago, under the name Qwikster.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember the specifics, and it’s now way past my bedtime… Oh, I should probably make it clear that I wasn’t making the case for the “kids” of OWS to stand aside and allow more practical “adults” from MoveOn and the Democratic Party to take over. That, I think, would be disastrous. What would also be terrible, though, is to have gone this far with Occupy Wall Street only to see it totally unravel as various factions go after one another, and the media focuses on the 1% of the 99% that’s most outside the mainstream (like the guy pictured above). I think there’s a real risk of this whole thing falling apart at the seams as it throttles up, but I’m sure there’s a way to avoid it. And, as ironic as it may sound, I think there are lessons from the corporate world that can be instructive.