ON THE AVENUES: There's no business like no business, and it's none of your business (2016).

The notion to repeat these thoughts from the Pre-Trump Pleistocene (okay, 2016) came when yet another News and Tribune staffer recently departed for greener fields at Louisville Business First, the latter having become an admitted source of information for me during the course of writing web site posts for Food & Dining Magazine. 

Let's turn back the clock.

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June 23, 2016: ON THE AVENUES: There's no business like no business, and it's none of your business.

“I used to say I practiced clinical medicine, now I say I practice political medicine, because it’s the mother of all illnesses. And we have to fix this one if we’re going to fix the things that are literally killing us.”
-- Dr. Jill Stein

I’ll return to politics in a moment, because naturally business must come first. Note that my contempt for the breathless contents of business-oriented publications is boundless. It is eternal. It is the stuff of inebriated, chortling legend.

Talk numbers to me, baby.

Um, no. Rather not.

Business porn is where good writing goes to die, condemned to sadistic asphyxiation in the service of coded buzz-speak and greasy greenback envy of the sort that only a One Southern Indiana oligarchy fetishist truly can appreciate when curled up in pajamas by the stock market ticker app, with an ice-cold Bud Light Lime and a box of handy tissues – doused in aloe, of course.

However, every now and then a stray provocation slips through my cordon sanitaire, as here:

How to survive political hostility when trying to run a business, by Terry Brock, Contributing Writer, Louisville Business First

Whoa! Have you sensed the level of political rivalry in this year’s election?

This seems to be much more intense this year. Notice the attacks on Trump supporters and the attacks by Trump supporters on opposition attendees at Trump rallies.

Yes, the American political scene has been known to be particularly venomous throughout history ...

… Yet, this election seems even more vicious, at least by 20th and 21st century standards. I’m wondering how it affects relationship marketing for small businesses and entrepreneurs like you and me.

Here are some ideas …

Venomous and vicious – which is to say, potentially important. This election may influence everyday business reality for generations to come. It may engender revolution, ignite reaction, or reinforce an uneasy status quo.

In short, the 2016 election truly matters for small business persons and entrepreneurs, and consequently, the consultant Brock’s bullet points counsel complete and utter detachment from the election (for their maddening details, kindly fluff Louisville Business First by visiting its web site).

• Political sharing idea #1 — Politics shouldn’t mix with business
• Political sharing idea #2 — You’ve got more important things to do — like focus on business!
• Political sharing idea #3 — If you must share politics, do it in the right place
• Political sharing idea #4 — You can lose customers
• Political sharing idea #5 — Avoid politics in public

And who’s this guy again?

Terry Brock gives real-world, practical tips on how to generate revenue and increase productivity.

Not that 1Si's self-interested cadres care one jot, but my practical advice differs markedly. I generally advise small business persons and entrepreneurs to make an earnest effort to understand politics and elections, particularly at the local level, where it impacts them the most, and to actively participate in these exercises.

Concurrently, is there any valid excuse for squandering potentially productive work time by reading business-oriented publications?

Business writing should not ever be mixed with actual business. Don’t these business people have more important things to do than read -- you know, like focusing on their businesses?

---

In mid-rant, I was reminded of a passage in Dylon Jones’ remarkable profile of “The Independent” (that’s me) in the June, 2016 edition of Louisville Magazine.

The profile  -- as of 2019 it isn't accessible on-line, but Dylon told me he'll fix that -- is required reading for the likes of Terry Brock, Wendy Dant Chesser and Adam Dickey – but I digress all too readily.

Jones writes:

I have a conversation with someone at the (Bank Street Brewhouse) who threatens to hunt me down if I identify them. I could, but won’t. I don’t believe in “off the record,” especially not retroactively. But I do believe in letting certain wounds – whatever they may be – heal beyond public gaze.

“Did you get the part about how Roger destroyed his business?” they said. “No one from city hall comes here.”

Then: “Don’t quote me.”

“Well, who could I talk to about that?” I asked.

“Anyone on the street,” they said.

As Elton John once observed, it’s a sad, sad situation – and it’s getting more and more absurd. After all, if it’s true that "city hall" stopped coming to Bank Street Brewhouse, then I managed to achieve a cherished goal of Americans from coast to coast, for it means I personally saw to it that GOVERNMENT GOT OUT OF OUR LIVES.

You’d think I’d be paid handsomely for this, not basely insulted. If only I could bottle this government-free formula, and hastily sell it to AB-InBev; that’d get my face on the cover of a business publication, for sure.

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It’s an unspeakably dreary landscape. There’s the professional business consulting class, recommending that entrepreneurs accustomed to taking fabulous risks – who’d never have gone into small business in the first place without standing tall for something – adopt generic, beige Pablum as a staple of their professional diets.

Then there’s the shrill claim that political extremism destroyed my own business, and that’s odd, because when I behaved exactly the same way for more than 15 years while standing atop a soap box situated behind the bar at Rich O’s, my behavior was edifying, entertaining and educational; probably an alcoholic Commie, though few seemed to mind.

Brock would be so proud of me: I helped generate revenue and increased productivity. We have medals for that, right?

And plaques?

However, there is a difference in scope between eras, and it is genuinely instructive. During the period of my nightly barside preaching at the Public House, subject matter typically pertained to national and international affairs.

There were opinions aplenty, but they were safe, in the sense that it’s a breeze to pontificate when lubricated, and there is no way to directly influence the outcome.

Because denouncing the Iranians from a barstool is easy. Repeating these words on a downtown Tehran street corner to their faces – well, that’s hard. Distance and liquidity enhance vehemence and courage.

And yet, if my university political science professor was right, and politics is all about the allocation of power … and if Tip O’Neill was right, and all politics is local … then for a local business, the allocation of local power is a critically important local variable, isn’t it?

Local political power structures play a huge role in determining business conditions and influencing business decisions, every day, throughout the year – don’t they?

And these local political power brokers live right here among us, right?

Theoretically, their proximity is as sweaty and direct as democracy gets. The grassroots can be no closer to you than the councilman residing two doors down. If a two-way street would lift your business, and yet it still runs in only one direction, then political power is being arrayed against you.

How does one hope to rectify the imbalance and fix the street without becoming part of the solution?

But no one from city hall comes here …

Perhaps their absence is a reflection on the prejudices of city hall, not the business or the proprietor, and their negligence is an abuse of political power, not its proper exercise.

Perhaps my political involvement has been grassroots-up, in reply to their top-down, because contrary to American default assumptions, self-defense still can exist apart from firearms.

Perhaps we can cure the mother of all illnesses right here at home, where it’s as close as it will ever be, but administering the needed medicine requires involvement and engagement, not cowering from a distance, head stuck in a business publication, pants around ankles.

1Si espouses unity on behalf of The Man, but I prefer unity in defiance of the Man. As citizen Franklin said, "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

He was a good businessman, that Benny.

---

The preceding prompted a follow-up the very next day.

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June 24, 2016: Business publications, and why I should know better than to tangle with an Over 50 Marketing Thought Leader. 

Yesterday my weekly column made reference to an Insider Louisville piece by Terry Brock, hastily assuming he was a local writer, but this is mistaken. He actually lives in Florida, and appears to be quite renowned.

I appreciate that Brock took the time to post a comment about my column, and of course I'd love to have a beer with him if he comes through town while on tour.

Terry Brock has left a new comment on your post:

ON THE AVENUES: There's no business like no business, and it's none of your business.

Brilliant piece, Roger! I love every word of it. Yes, I believe we need a separation of business and politics and businesses should focus on their business.

You raise some excellent points about local issues. That is important. For many of us, "local" is Planet Earth. We focus on issues that affect many and are tied together based more on values and aspirations than a defined piece of dirt where we happen to live currently.

Hey, I would *LOVE* to talk with you more about this. Sounds like these types of discussions would be best over some of that good craft beer you have up there in New Albany! For doing such an outstanding job on this piece, I owe you a nice beer, or other beverage of your choice!

Thanx for writing this. Simply brilliant, Roger! Keep up the good work!

Terry Brock - TerryBrock.com

Here's my most renowned contribution to business marketing. It's rather politicized, though only because I fully intended it to be that way.

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Terry Brock and I never got together, unfortunately. My former business finally disgorged me in February of 2018, and City Hall currently is engaged in a great struggle to renew its pay and privileges for another four years. When Dylon posts the profile text, I'll link readers to it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have several "business publications" to ignore ... and adult beverages to consume.

---

Recent columns:

September 5: ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to traditional Danish lunch in Copenhagen, September 1989.

August 29: ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to "Pagan Life," a weekly column devoted to heathens, infidels, idolaters, atheists, non-theists, irreligious people, agnostics, skeptics, heretics and apostates.

August 22: ON THE AVENUES: The 32 most influential books in my life.

August 15: ON THE AVENUES: Breakfast is better with those gorgeous little herrings.

Branding Gahan's "sweet spot," part two: He's selling a whole city in his own image, but personality cults aren't pretty pictures.

Part one here.

There can be no doubt. Jeff Gahan's "sweetest spot" is himself.

In his What is character and why it really does matter, Thomas A. Wright states, "The cult of personality phenomenon refers to the idealized, even god-like, public image of an individual consciously shaped and molded through constant propaganda and media exposure. As a result, one is able to manipulate others based entirely on the influence of public personality...the cult of personality perspective focuses on the often shallow, external images that many public figures cultivate to create an idealized and heroic image."

A few recent examples follow. Cautionary note: these images are not for the faint of heart.

The conclusion is as obvious as it is absurd.

Jeff Gahan has been branding the city in his own image, and using our money to do it, but we need collective thinking, not the shoddy veneer of a personality cult.

Here's one definition of branding.

The process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumers' mind, mainly through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme. Branding aims to establish a significant and differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers.

Below is an article by the estimable Aaron Renn, in which the author discusses branding, or in this case the marketing efforts undertaken by cities.

You can’t help but notice how few unique things about these cities manage to come through.

What about branding our town? For the past eight years here in New Albany, what passes for a "brain trust" at City Hall (try not to cringe in disgust) surely has undertaken a branding campaign. It may or may not have been explicitly organized as a branding campaign, but the effect has been the same.

In essence, New Albany very much has been branded as New Gahania, which is to say that in terms of promotions, every aspect of the city has been tied to the mayor's cult of personality: New Albany is Jeff Gahan, and vice versa.

Students of history will recognize this device from numerous authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, but let's focus on just one: Italy under Benito Mussolini during the 1920s and 1930s.

Mussolini's Italian "fascism" came along first, and was in many ways a precursor of Adolf Hitler's organizational model for Nazi Germany. In fact, Mussolini's chosen symbol became the word to describe his movement.

Fasces ... a bound bundle of wooden rods, sometimes including an axe with its blade emerging. The fasces had its origin in the Etruscan civilization and was passed on to ancient Rome, where it symbolized a magistrate's power and jurisdiction.

A fasces looks like this.

Gahan's chosen symbol emerged from the back rooms where appointed committees meet, utterly without the input or votes of any elected official, and as selected by then-redevelopment honcho and noted artistic design expert David Duggins because it looked "cute."

Now it has become the anchor that adorns every city-owned object.

In Duggins' own words, the anchor was chosen to be a "branding device" for the city. This points to the importance of knowing the meaning of words, for an anchor is something heavy that is used to keep a boat fixed in place, not moving.

Consequently New Albany's second-most-important act of branding during the past eight years has been to slap the anchor logo on everything, which has the effect of announcing that we'll be moving forward while remaining anchored right where we were.

It may not be the best branding for the world outside, but it actually jibes with Gahan's self-aggrandizing governing philosophy, as when he claimed to radically change the street grid while doing almost nothing to ... radically change the street grid.

But far more so than anchors, our foremost branding effort has been devoted to slapping Gahan's cherubic chihuahua image on every last advertisement purchased with taxpayer dollars. An anchor keeps the boat from moving. Gahan keeps the city from moving, while grandly lubricating his own pockets with pay-to-play dollars from special interests.

Of course, Benito Mussolini already had been there and done that.

Allow me to direct this comment to those merchants and independent business owners who tend to accept what they're told at gatherings without examining any of it too closely: if we work together as a collective bearing the weight of our combined investments, the city's marketing and branding would reflect us.

As it stands, the city has indeed been branding -- as New Gahania, not New Albany. This does much for the incumbent, and almost nothing for the rest of us. Worse still, he's been using our money to pay for his own glorification.

Cities: Don’t Fall in the Branding Trap, by Aaron Renn (CityLab)

From Instagram stunts to Edison bulbs, why do so many cities’ marketing plans try to convince people that they’re exactly like somewhere else?

It’s curious that while every company tries its hardest to convince you of how much different and better it is than every other company in its industry, every city tries its hardest to convince you it’s exactly the same as every other city that’s conventionally considered cool.

Look at any piece of city marketing material, from promo videos to airline magazine ad inserts. It’s amazing how so many of them rely on the same basic ingredients: hipster coffee shops, microbreweries, bike lanes, creative-class members, startups, intimations of a fashion scene, farm-to-table restaurants, new downtown streetcars, etc.

These are all good things, mind you: things cities should be happy to have. Some of them may even be modern necessities. But you can’t help but notice how few unique things about these cities manage to come through ...

Four more years of this?

So off went the Emperor in procession under his splendid canopy. Everyone in the streets and the windows said, "Oh, how fine are the Emperor's new clothes! Don't they fit him to perfection? And see his long train!" Nobody would confess that he couldn't see anything, for that would prove him either unfit for his position, or a fool. No costume the Emperor had worn before was ever such a complete success.

"But he hasn't got anything on," a little child said.

"Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?" said its father. And one person whispered to another what the child had said, "He hasn't anything on. A child says he hasn't anything on."

"But he hasn't got anything on!" the whole town cried out at last.

Yes, the "Tsar of the Shopping Cart" has been branding the city in his own image and using our money to do it.

However, we need collective grassroots thinking, not the shoddy veneer of a personality cult, even if the absurd personality cult veneer is what we keep getting, again and again. Here's a sampling.

December 16, 2018: Cult of personality: Jeff Gahan's face appears on doggie calendars and in newspaper inserts. It's blatant electioneering at the taxpayer's expense.

August 13, 2018: Earache My Eye: Check out Deaf Gahan's full page Anchor Marriage ad in Extol's wedding issue.

August 10, 2018: Shameless self-aggrandizement as Gahan invites 1Si to provide career counseling to local students.

June 13, 2018: Jeff "Look at Me" Gahan's aquatic cult of personality: He brings us health, all by himself.

February 3, 2018: Inflatable Date Night is ultimate proof that Deaf Gahan seeks to emulate Rev. Moon with a hip new campaign finance baby boom.

January 18, 2018: ON THE AVENUES: During our State of the Gahanaissance Address for 2018, feel free to resort to hard liquor. I did, and will.

September 10, 2017: Adam polishes Jeffrey's personality cult, and yet Dickey's Floyd County Democratic Party still hasn't embraced Gahan's public housing putsch.

June 11, 2017: CARTOON: Gahan Mach III ... or, daddy needs a brand new logo.

June 4, 2017: Scraping rock bottom: Jeff Gahan brings his cult of personality to Kroger shopping carts. But who paid for these political ads?

June 4, 2017: Shopping cart blurbs, magazine ads, billboards ... and now the NTSPY Awards. How much of your money is Jeff Gahan spending on all this?

There's a way out of this deaf, dumb and blind alley: #FireGahan2019

---

I'm voting for David White.

Democratic mayoral candidate David White understands that change begins with a whole lotta scrubbing, and NA Confidential advocates just such a deep civic cleansing. 

After eight years on the job, Mayor Jeff Gahan's list of stunning "achievements" is long, indeed: tax increases, budgetary hide 'n' seek, self-deification, daily hypocrisy, public housing takeover, non-transparency, pay-to-play for no-bid contracts, bullying city residents and bullying city employees. Eight years is enough. It's time to drain Gahan's swamp, flush his ruling clique and take this city back from Gahan's Indy-based special interest donors. 

NA Confidential supports David White for Mayor in the Democratic Party primary, with voting now through May 7. 

Jeff Gahan has been branding the city in his own image, and using our money to do it, but we need collective thinking, not the shoddy veneer of a personality cult.

Here's one definition of branding.

The process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumers' mind, mainly through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme. Branding aims to establish a significant and differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers.

Below is an article by the estimable Aaron Renn, in which the author discusses branding, or in this case the marketing efforts undertaken by cities.

You can’t help but notice how few unique things about these cities manage to come through.

What about branding our town?

For the past eight years here in New Albany, what passes for a "brain trust" at City Hall (try not to cringe in disgust) surely has undertaken a branding campaign. It may or may not have been explicitly organized as a branding campaign, but the effect has been the same.

In essence, New Albany very much has been branded as New Gahania, which is to say that in terms of promotions, every aspect of the city has been tied to the mayor's cult of personality: New Albany is Jeff Gahan, and vice versa.

Students of history will recognize this device from numerous totalitarian regimes, but let's focus on just one: Italy under Benito Mussolini during the 1920s and 1930s.

Mussolini's Italian "fascism" came along first, and was in many ways a precursor of Adolf Hitler's organizational model for Nazi Germany. In fact, Mussolini's chosen symbol became the word to describe his movement.

Fasces ... a bound bundle of wooden rods, sometimes including an axe with its blade emerging. The fasces had its origin in the Etruscan civilization and was passed on to ancient Rome, where it symbolized a magistrate's power and jurisdiction.

A fasces looks like this.

Gahan's chosen symbol emerged from the back rooms where appointed committees meet, utterly without the input or votes of any elected official, and as selected by then-redevelopment honcho and noted artistic design expert David Duggins because it looked "cute."

Now it has become the anchor that adorns every city-owned object.

In Duggins' own words, the anchor was chosen to be a "branding device" for the city. This points to the importance of knowing the meaning of words, for an anchor is something heavy that is used to keep a boat fixed in place, not moving.

Consequently New Albany's second-most-important act of branding during the past eight years has been to slap the anchor logo on everything, which has the effect of announcing that we'll be moving forward while remaining anchored right where we were.

It may not be the best branding for the world outside, but it actually jibes with Gahan's self-aggrandizing governing philosophy, as when he claimed to radically change the street grid while doing almost nothing to ... radically change the street grid.

But far more so than anchors, our foremost branding effort has been devoted to slapping Gahan's cherubic chihuahua image on every last advertisement purchased with taxpayer dollars. An anchor keeps the boat from moving. Gahan keeps the city from moving, while grandly lubricating his own pockets with pay-to-play dollars from special interests.

Of course, Benito Mussolini already had been there and done that.

Allow me to direct this comment to those merchants and independent business owners who tend to accept what they're told at gatherings without examining any of it too closely: if we work together as a collective bearing the weight of our combined investments, the city's marketing and branding would reflect us.

As it stands, the city has indeed been branding -- as New Gahania, not New Albany. This does much for the incumbent, and almost nothing for the rest of us. Worse still, he's been using our money to pay for his own glorification.

One way to repair this profound malfunction is #FireGahan2019, and start the process of taking back our civic identity from the charlatan in chief.

Cities: Don’t Fall in the Branding Trap, by Aaron Renn (CityLab)

From Instagram stunts to Edison bulbs, why do so many cities’ marketing plans try to convince people that they’re exactly like somewhere else?

It’s curious that while every company tries its hardest to convince you of how much different and better it is than every other company in its industry, every city tries its hardest to convince you it’s exactly the same as every other city that’s conventionally considered cool.

Look at any piece of city marketing material, from promo videos to airline magazine ad inserts. It’s amazing how so many of them rely on the same basic ingredients: hipster coffee shops, microbreweries, bike lanes, creative-class members, startups, intimations of a fashion scene, farm-to-table restaurants, new downtown streetcars, etc.

These are all good things, mind you: things cities should be happy to have. Some of them may even be modern necessities. But you can’t help but notice how few unique things about these cities manage to come through ...

ON THE AVENUES: When it comes to beer, less might yet be more.

ON THE AVENUES: When it comes to beer, less might yet be more.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Last week's open letter to Harvest Homecoming by Cisa Kubley of Sew Fitting quickly became the most read column of the year to date. Harvest Homecoming officials have been offered the opportunity to reply in this space. 

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I remember being in Prague in the mid-1990s. We’d wander through downtown neighborhoods hunting beer – sometimes hopping trams, other times the subway, but most often on foot.

The objective was to find drafts from as many of the Czech Republic’s breweries as possible, and having identified these beers, to drink them straight down.

In retrospect, it isn’t clear to me what sort of legal framework for beer distribution existed in the Czech Republic at the time. Something akin to a “tied house” seemed common, in that a pivnice (piv-nee-tsuh, or tavern) generally would serve beer from only one brewery.

These days, we’d probably decamp to a multi-tap and be overwhelmed by sheer choice. I’ve read that Prague now has such establishments boasting bountiful selections, as well as WiFi to enable the inevitable postings at Untappd, but this approach strikes me as tantamount to the king’s gamesmen running the animals past his shooting stand.

It’s also no way to conduct a drinking tour of a city, especially when traveling overseas, where there’s so much else to be learned.

20-odd years ago, many of Prague’s pubs served beers from one of the city’s “big three” breweries: Staropramen, Braník or Mestan, the latter two apparently long deceased as independent entities.

Other breweries were well represented, too, and it seemed the closer their home cities to Prague, the better chance of finding them. Pilsner Urquell was a given. Gambrinus, Velkopopovický and Radegast also were around, though at the time, the epochal Budvar not as much.

Intriguingly, it remained possible in the mid-1990s to find watering holes in Prague that had hooked up with smaller breweries, or even larger ones further away from the capital. There’d be occasional appearances by Ferdinand (from nearby Benešov), Hostan (Znojmo), Regent (Třeboň) or Starobrno (Brno).

The trick was finding the places serving them, as they didn’t always correspond to familiar addresses amid the prevailing tourist routes. We'd forage down back alleys, through obscure archways and below street level in dark cellars.

An obscure brewery called Herold became an obsession for my band of beer explorers. It was founded in the countryside in 1506, surviving the threat of closure in the waning months of the Communist period only because its stubborn plant manager refused to do what the authorities told him.

These authorities soon were gone, and the plant manager remained.

We traipsed over what seemed like half of Prague one evening trying to find the sole pivnice that we’d been told poured Herold, and stopping frequently for directions at other establishments along the way. These wayfinding tips generally came accompanied by beers of thankfulness, which might explain our ultimate failure.

Resolving to locate the Herold brewery itself, eventually we were able to do so in 1997 with the help of a savvy travel agent in Prague, who secured a minibus and driver for a day’s journey deep into the Bohemian hinterlands.

First we visited the town of Velké Popovice for a Velkopopovický Kozel tasting, then Vysoký Chlumec (home of Lobkowitz), and finally the tiny town of Březnice, where a farmer on a tractor pulling a wagon overflowing with manure slowly guided our careful man at the wheel to the Herold brewery gate.

I’d contacted the manager, but he had an untimely emergency and wasn’t there, so his second in command made a hasty phone call, ran out the door, and soon emerged with a local schoolteacher in tow to serve as interpreter.

Our Herold brewery tour lasted all of 20 minutes, yielding to a considerably more intensive two-hour survey of the lagering cellar. By the end of our seminar below ground, we had absorbed so much knowledge that the ancient stone staircase leading back to the top began wildly undulating to the beat of non-existent music.

The magical motion very nearly kept us subterranean, which would have been just lovely by me.

Two decades later, much has changed in the Czech Republic -- and everywhere else in the world, too. Many of the old-school Czech breweries are gone (Herold perhaps survives), and a new crop of “craft” brewers has arrived.

Granted, the range of beer choice in Prague used to be far narrower, but it was a beer paradise nonetheless, and while it may sound as though I’m waxing nostalgic for a bygone era – one I devoted a full quarter-century of my professional life to revolutionizing – it’s very important to understand that yes, you bet I am … unless of course, I’m not.

Just as trudging eight miles robed in primitive bearskin through six-foot-high snow drifts helped transform a previous generation of mid-20th century schoolchildren into improved parental units, hunting beers the hard way had its merits.

Beer tastes better when you work for them, and breweries, too; we’d follow a canal or rail line, sniff the unmistakable aroma of a boil in progress, and follow our noses to the goal line. The biggest problem was finding our way home.

---

The real reason I’m bringing all this up is because, as a consumer, there exists a little-known, positive connotation to the tied house: If it’s a Fuller’s pub, you know there’ll be Fuller’s served there. No guesswork is involved, and at times, this can be a good thing.

In the present era, unceasing “guest” tap rotation has morphed into something that’s incredibly diverse, but also no longer comes moored to any system or routine. It’s wonderful and chaotic, all at once.

Rotating guest taps made for a refreshing trend when acting as the changeable component alongside a non-revolving core selection, but we’ve long since settled into the rigid orthodoxy of a daily (hourly?) spin-the-flavor-wheel approach. Accordingly, fresh ideas for marketing and retailing a profusion of better beer choices have steadily diminished.

When the only constant is dizzying change, then surely for some establishments in search of a noteworthy market niche, resolving to give the pendulum a nudge in the opposite direction is merited. Either a semi-permanent selection of classics, or a single brewery’s popular range, would make for a distinctive strategy.

Naturally, I’m not sanctioning tied houses if by “tied” we mean contractually narrowed choice, especially via a swillmonger. And, of course, the tied house isn’t exactly legal in America – even when it happens, which is lamentably often.

Rather, I’m suggesting the veracity of a voluntary "self-tie" of sorts, and as always, I’m insistent that any beer and brewing knowledge base emanate from behind the bar, as reflected by an intelligent and coherent (if narrowed) selection, and mirroring the conceptual contours of an establishment’s wine and spirits program.

After all, everyone knows that a bar simply must have a core selection of liquor, but how does this not apply to beer styles?

Conversely, many bars in metropolitan Louisville proudly feature Brown-Forman wines and spirits. So, why not follow suit with an exclusive selection of Falls City’s genuinely independent local drafts?

Wouldn’t it make sense for an eatery on the Indiana side of the river to feature all Sun King drafts? And isn’t it true that if one did, Sun King’s three flagships – Sunlight, Osiris and Wee Mac – would be the biggest sellers?

There are many ways of cultivating loyalty. My contention is that more customers than we tend to think actually like the idea of “their” favorite brand or style of beer, and when it comes to better (“craft”) beer, the merits of continuity are being vastly undervalued.

Accordingly, there’s a case to be made for making the process of choosing a regular beer easier for those who might become regular customers just because they know what to expect when they drop in for a sandwich.

If there were a pub pouring draft Guinness, Pilsner Urquell and Fuller's London Pride all the time, with just one or two guest taps on seasonal rotation to round out the lineup, would it be suicidal or innovative?

Aside from the absence of representative beer localism, itself a correspondingly viable strategy for a half-dozen largely fixed taps, I'm voting for innovative. In fact, there’d be something I personally like on tap, all the time. The deciding factor would be if the pub were a comfortable place to drink and converse. If so, six well-tended faucets might well be preferable to fifty-six.

And there's only so much time in the first place, and it would help weed out the beer rating narcissists.

---

Recent columns:

November 2:
ON THE AVENUES: A downtown business owner's open letter to Harvest Homecoming.

October 26: ON THE AVENUES: Could that be David Duggins paddling across Jeff Gahan's putrid cesspool? On second thought, I'll take the blindfold.

October 19: ON THE AVENUES: I'd like nothing more than to go for another ride.

October 12: ON THE AVENUES: The Orange Occupation is here again, and as a precaution, we’ve baked a handy file into this cake.

Branding Columbus? New Gahania brands, too, albeit with the dullest of bright shiny objects.

In a moment, Aaron M. Renn is going to comment on branding challenges in the context of two cities, both called Columbus, but first a digression.

Whether or not "branding" in this context is desirable or even necessary for New Albany is a topic we can discuss at a later date. For the moment, let's accept that it is, at least to some extent.

So far we're not branding -- and yet we are, just the same.

The last time a comprehensive civic "branding" campaign was proposed hereabouts was 2011, when King England III reigned. The comprehensively horrendous "Come to City" proposal was botched so thoroughly by Team England and Develop New Albany that perhaps it's understandable no one wants to be seen touching the branding notion again.

The Gahan regime has tossed out several half-baked marketing ideas, "where you want to be," HarvestHomeComingStan and the more recent hashtag #OurNA among them, but there is no mistaking these scattershot placeholders for a coherent, unified municipal branding campaign.

However, stealth branding is another matter.

Sadly, as David Duggins always insisted, our proliferation of mud-stuck anchors, currently affixed to every city-owned object without the good sense to duck, is in fact our brand.

In short, here we are, anchored in place -- without the approval of a single, solitary elected official save Jeff Gahan himself.

Furthermore, both Gahan and his chosen cudgel, Develop New Albany, largely have substituted themselves and their self-branding schemes for an organized campaign in the larger civic sense.

In this, we're getting exactly what we're paying for ... good and hard.

Since Gahan took office in 2012, there has been no substantive public dialogue about any topic pertaining to branding. Six years later, we have anchors galore and Gahan "presenting" everything from the daily rising of the sun to concerts he didn't himself finance.

Gahan's cult of personality is so surreal that NAC's satire can't come close to keeping up with it.

Columbus, Indiana has world-renowned architecture as its brand. New Albany has a tarnished, tinpot, quasi-Third World-bureaucrat's face, wrapped around an anchor embracing all the wrong metaphors.

Well, I suppose it worked for Alfredo Stroessner -- and Trumpolini, too.

The Columbus, Ohio Branding Problem Illustrated, by Aaron Renn (Urbanophile)

If you want to get a sense of the branding challenge facing Columbus, Ohio, consider this:

This weekend in Columbus, Ohio people will be watching a film called “Columbus” that is set in Columbus…..Indiana.

People don’t like it when I point out that internationally, more people are probably familiar with Columbus, Indiana (pop 46,850 in a metro of 81,402) than Columbus, Ohio (pop 860,090 in a metro of over two million).

And this:

Or, as one local talked about in a recent article about the identity of the city, you have to put a flag in the ground – a really, really good flag – and make your stand.

Obviously this takes time. These recent Columbus, Indiana items were built on the architectural legacy from long ago. But you have to start somewhere.

Refresher course: “Let’s become a place where people want to be. And if we achieve that, everything else should follow.”

Just waiting to be proven right. Patience, grasshopper.

At times of exhaustion or dissipation -- hell, it's even been known to happen while sober and well-rested, but why risk it? -- there'll be a merry bout of free association.

Here is mine for Monday, April 24. It begins with yesterday's post about the attractions of river mud.

Mud-struck New Gahanian anchor seal marketing ... and Rhode Island's disastrous state branding campaign.

This is not a "marketing piece", a "branding image" - it's not a progressive symbol, it doesn't imply a growing and vital city. An anchor? Who designed this?

A reader left this comment.

Ms. Marshall's article's most relevant point that applies to New Albany's effort:

5) Make it sellable in the first place

Finally, the secret sauce to place branding: the place. “If the community doesn’t have infrastructure, doesn’t have enough beds to attract new tourists, or it doesn’t have a qualified workforce to offer, then from a business perspective and marketing perspective, your money should go toward improving the community,” says Pryor.

It ain’t worth advertising if there’s nothing worth selling.

Then there's this, also from yesterday.

I've just finished reading Jaron Lanier's book, "You Are Not a Gadget."

Funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth. The body starts consuming itself. That is what we are doing online.

This brings me to the left hook. The author's interview with Jeff Speck provides a useful reminder of the point appearing in bold, italic and enlarged font. It's about becoming a place where people want to be each and every day, not during scattered one-off celebrations. That's why a two-way street grid matters.

City Hall insists it's coming. I'll believe it when the trucks that shouldn't be on Spring Street in the first place begin traveling in two directions.

designer-jeff-speck-walkable-cities-economic-development/">Urban designer Jeff Speck on walkable cities and economic development, by Rudolph Bell (Upstate Business Journal)

“Let’s become a place where people want to be. And if we achieve that, everything else should follow.”

Jeff Speck is a city planner, urban designer, author, and lecturer who advocates for more walkable cities. He advises municipalities and real estate developers through Speck & Associates, his consultancy in Brookline, Mass. Speck is the author of “Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time” and was previously director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts.

UBJ interviewed Speck on April 12 while he was in Greenville for a speaking engagement at the downtown offices of Clemson University’s MBA program. The event was sponsored by the Greenville chapter of the American Institute of Architects and 21 other groups.

Mud-struck New Gahanian anchor seal marketing ... and Rhode Island's disastrous state branding campaign.

Among the questions we've been asking since 2015, or maybe 2014 ... say, exactly when did the junta seize power, anyway?

Branding mud-struck: Why did the city of New Albany steal Anchor Brewing's seal?

We receive comments, like this one here.

It's sadly fitting they've chosen an anchor as a graphic representation of the city. An anchor fixes a potentially moving object to a place. It gets stuck in the mud and silt and keeps things from moving. That's why it's called an anchor.

This is not a "marketing piece", a "branding image" - it's not a progressive symbol, it doesn't imply a growing and vital city. An anchor? Who designed this?

This is "marketing" just like offering seven MILLION dollars to Pillsbury AFTER they said they they were leaving - that wasn't a "plan to attract businesses to the city" either. Too little and much, much too late.

And another by e-mail.

In going through files recently, I noticed that the city's new "branding logo" has replaced the old city seal on mundane printed things such as the city sewer bill.

I'v also noticed the inclusion of the city's new "branding logo" on the new street signs.

Questions abound:

1) How can the city seal be changed without public discussion and vote by council?

2) Why wasn't someone with real graphic design experience used to create versions of the logo that could be easily seen at various distances or in various uses?

The artwork is much too "thin" and confusing when seen in reverse, at a distance on street signs.

Who designed it, why and at whose request? Was a fee paid?

Back when Dan Coffey was on the mayor's payroll -- before he wasn't, and now he's back again -- there was an entirely normal city council meeting, during which these questions were answered, except they weren't.

As McLaughlin dozes, Coffey expresses his dislike of fuddy-duddy steamboat seal-bearing visitors.

The city's economic dishevelment facilitator, David Duggins, at long last became interested in the melee, and vaulted forward to volunteer this: The new symbol is a "marketing piece" and "branding mechanism," and not a new official seal. Branding and marketing. By executive order. Small wonder we remain anchored.

To avoid further instances of brain death, let's consider the case of the anchor-like millstone around Rhode Island's neck.

The Anatomy of a Disastrous State Branding Campaign, by Aarian Marshall (CityLab)

After Rhode Island’s epic screw-up, a five-step guide to doing better.

 ... Are place branding campaigns ever worth it? It’s hard to figure out, because campaigns are difficult to divorce from the actual city. Is that spike in jobs due to that sweet ad your commerce board put out two years ago, or because Large Company X liked the cut of your (empty office park’s) jib? Are tourists abandoning your boardwalk because your logo deeply offended their aesthetic sensibilities, or because the best funnel cake place closed last year? Still, as the state of Rhode Island points out, there’s definitely a bad way to do it. CityLab talked to marketing experts to figure out what went wrong—and what cities, states, and regions can do better next time.

Business publications, and why I should know better than to tangle with an Over 50 Marketing Thought Leader.

Yesterday my weekly column included a consideration of business-oriented publications.

Business porn is where good writing goes to die, condemned to sadistic asphyxiation in the service of coded buzz-speak and greasy greenback envy of the sort that only a One Southern Indiana oligarchy fetishist truly can appreciate when curled up in pajamas by the stock market ticker, with an ice-cold Bud Light Lime and a box of handy tissues – doused in aloe, of course.

I made reference to an Insider Louisville piece by Terry Brock, hastily assuming he was a local writer, but this is mistaken. He actually lives in Florida, and appears to be quite renowned.

I appreciate that Brock took the time to post a comment about my column, and of course I'd love to have a beer with him if he comes through town while on tour.

Terry Brock has left a new comment on your post:

ON THE AVENUES: There's no business like no business, and it's none of your business.

Brilliant piece, Roger! I love every word of it. Yes, I believe we need a separation of business and politics and businesses should focus on their business.

You raise some excellent points about local issues. That is important. For many of us, "local" is Planet Earth. We focus on issues that affect many and are tied together based more on values and aspirations than a defined piece of dirt where we happen to live currently.

Hey, I would *LOVE* to talk with you more about this. Sounds like these types of discussions would be best over some of that good craft beer you have up there in New Albany! For doing such an outstanding job on this piece, I owe you a nice beer, or other beverage of your choice!

Thanx for writing this. Simply brilliant, Roger! Keep up the good work!

Terry Brock - TerryBrock.com

Here's my most renowned contribution to business marketing. It's rather politicized, though only because I fully intended it to be that way.

As McLaughlin dozes, Coffey expresses his dislike of fuddy-duddy steamboat seal-bearing visitors.

At last evening's meeting of the Ayatollah Coffey Prayer Klatsch (ACPK, which sounds remarkably similar to sounds formerly made by Bill the Cat), local historian Vic Megenity sat patiently, awaiting his turn to speak at the very end, when public comments on non-agenda items are permitted.

When his opportunity came, photocopies were distributed as Megenity told the story of the Robert E. Lee steamboat, which was constructed in New Albany in 1866 and is pictured on New Albany's official seal (to the left).

The reason why Megenity attended the meeting is the appearance lately of a new symbol (to the right, above), which recently began appearing on-line, in documents and as affixed to a new generation of street signs.

Here is a color view of the new symbol, which depicts an anchor.

Megenity's point: Why has the perennial symbol been changed? Had the council approved such a change? Was anyone present aware of the reasoning?

And why an anchor, which symbolizes being kept in place, rather than moving forward?

(Amid all this talk of symbols and symbolism, CM Scott Blair was observed shifting uncomfortably in his seat, a banker preferring as always the rock-hard realism of the spreadsheet)

Verily, public speaking time before council is supposed to be exactly that. Members of the public say their piece, without interference, but rare is the time when this actually happens. Like so many others before him, Megenity was not able to complete his remarks last night before being shouted down by Coffey, who commonly is allowed to posture and bully in this manner because Pat McLaughlin, the ostensible presiding officer (and the mayor's designated gatekeeper), is perhaps the single weakest-willed such performer in the council's recent memory.

Thus, we were treated to Coffey caterwauling and foaming at the mouth about his preference for the new symbol, and his back-dated ire at historic preservation constantly standing in the way of his kickbacks from city-ordained demolition specialists, until finally John Gonder intervened to query the obvious: Why has this switcheroo occurred without anyone knowing it?

The city's economic dishevelment facilitator, David Duggins, at long last became interested in the melee, and vaulted forward to volunteer this: The new symbol is a "marketing piece" and "branding mechanism," and not a new official seal.

Branding and marketing. By executive order. Small wonder we remain anchored.

Megenity produced a surviving artifact from the original Robert E. Lee steamboat. It's a bell pull.

Ring the steamboat's bell, and make Dan Coffey drool. The jokes write themselves, don't they, Dr. Pavlov?

Here's the resolution of the historical society; as it is purely symbolic, we can surmise much discomfort in the bean counter's milieu.

Can we find someone to run a meeting efficiently?

"Sometimes, marketing enables a pickpocket to steal a wallet--and be thanked for it."

Ground control to Doctor Tom: Do you have a dog in this fight?

The perfect crime, by Seth Godin

Sometimes, marketing enables a pickpocket to steal a wallet--and be thanked for it.

Marketers are responsible for what we do, it's not an activity without effects.

Last year, just one of the big fast food companies made more than $1,300,000,000 in profit (billion with a 'b'). They've also paid their CEO nearly $200 million in salary in the last five years. Sometimes, a big profit is the sign that you're doing something right, creating real value for people able to pay. Sometimes, though, it means you're exploiting a weakness in the system.

The big food companies are brilliant, relentless, focused marketers. Marketing works. It gets people to take action, to change their minds, and most of all, to do more of what they might have had an inkling to do in the first place. Sometimes a lot more. When the ideas of marketing (and the products are part of the marketing, optimized for high consumption) are weaponized like this, they are extraordinarily effective at achieving their goals.

The side effects of this marketing are obvious: both short-term satiation and long-term health degradation.

ON THE AVENUES: 800-lb “gorilla” marketing.

ON THE AVENUES: 800-lb “gorilla” marketing.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Twitter Patter

@will_smith: “Grudges are a waste of perfect happiness.”

@JayBilas: “What if grudges make you perfectly happy?”

In April, the New Albanian Brewing Company completed a project in conjunction with two undergraduate marketing classes at IU Southeast. That’s my alma mater, where I never took a single business (or mathematics) class in route to a philosophy degree. I managed to avoid science save for a solitary biology class, although that’s another story.

The marketing project was instructional, and also loads of fun, especially given that I’ve always enjoyed cultivating a reputation as the Antichrist of “business education as usual.” Suffice to say that this is overblown; still, the cooperative venture between NABC and the pedagogues came as somewhat of a surprise to some observers.

It shouldn’t have. While I’ve enjoyed several instances of good-natured jousting with the School of Business faculty over various ideas and concepts, I’ve always been interested in how their students, most of them half my age, might react to the assignment of understanding a business like ours, and then rebranding NABC as a brewing entity first and foremost, and a brewpub/restaurant (with two locations) second. In short, how are we to be better known as a brewery?

Now a measure of youth has been served (not literally), at least insofar as this sampling is concerned, and as expected, the results were all over the map. All the groups did a fine job, while some did better than other. Even those groups that were less than cohesive in an overall sense had useful nuggets of solid ideas to offer NABC.

There were tags and phrases, organizational suggestions, web site revisions, practical steps to clarify the message, and many more. I deeply appreciate the efforts of all participants, and hope to do something like it again, some day in the future. However, I must confess to being surprised by one consistent aspect of all the presentations, which might be described as a general reluctance to boldly step outside the box and embrace unconventional, guerrilla marketing tactics.

Perhaps this was a reflection of inexperience, or requirements of the curriculum and what information they’d previously assimilated, but knowing their instructor Mike Breazeale’s guerrilla proclivities, I’m inclined to doubt it. To me, it’s a universal condition, seeing as children are raised to conform to the pre-conceived, not extend perimeters.

For instance, even in this fragmented age, there was a shared assumption among almost 60 students as to the inevitability of television, radio and billboards as prime means of informational conveyance – but not newspapers. As I’d guessed going in, there was nary a mention of the word “newspaper,” apart from references to Louisville Eccentric Observer and whatever ephemeral shards remain of the Courier-Journal’s late and unlamented Velocity.

Curiously, there was much less mention of social media than I’d expected. Is it so ubiquitous to young people nowadays that it isn’t even necessary to bring it up?

---

By the end of the venture, I’d started thinking about the nature of human conformity.

I’m obviously no sociologist – although sometimes I play one on the blog – and yet I’m struck by the extent of default acceptance of conformity in everyday life. It’s the path of least resistance, and seemingly we’re in no position, or lack the interpretive tools, to step back from our unquestioned assumptions and subject them to something approximating analysis.

There is an insinuation to the effect that as one goes forward, there’ll be compliance with the norms far more often than not. Perhaps this is true because in the sense of large, humanity-wide samplings, norms gradually came into being precisely because they address the temperaments of the species, and often because whether sensible or not, the norms have become codified, and the weight of social and legal systems reinforces them.

For many, it’s entirely understandable that blending into the mass is the simplest way to live. Trust me: It takes quite a lot of energy to challenge the mainstream, even in small ways such as those I try to extol, and to be truly different. For instance, it’s both funny and sad to note the reaction when you begin describing an urban landscape that isn’t auto-centric. Before the first paragraph is through, listeners begin nestling their car keys.

---

And so it happened that about the very same time the IUS marketing class project was completed, I received an e-mail from Cavalier Distributing, NABC’s statewide wholesale distributor in Indiana, to the effect that the infamous Central Indiana package store chain known as Big Red Liquors had asked Cavalier about stocking our 22-oz bomber bottles.

I objected, and vehemently.

Since 2009, when New Albanian Brewing Company first began distributing our beer statewide in Indiana, we have made absolutely no effort to sell anything to Big Red Liquors. Cavalier has followed suit -- at our request. From the start, I made it clear that we wanted nothing to do with them. The reason for this is that NABC has no desire to be partnered, whether directly or ephemerally – neither in a mercantile sense nor metaphorically in any sense – with Big Red. We have a history, and it is an unpleasant one. I hold few grudges. This is one of them, and Jay Bilas is right: It makes me perfectly happy.

I understand that some will find it incredible that I’d intentionally deny my own company the opportunity to sell beer through such a large retailer. However, to me, it isn’t always about money. I directed a letter to Big Red’s president asking his company to cease and desist from purchasing NABC beers – to please just leave us alone – until the Big Red employee with whom I cannot co-exist either apologizes to me for the slight that led to the grudge, or is no longer employed by the company.

Isn’t that reasonable? Isn’t life too short for one to be compelled to fluff entities that are revolting? I could not care less if refusing to conform to expectations of the buyer-seller relationship makes me a pariah, because for each potential customer who’s into abject bondage, another appreciates the liberating connotations of telling Big Red to stuff it.

It is so very difficult to convey the value of taking the road less traveled. Still, I recommend the diversion.

Open thread: Marketing unity, communication, cooperation and selling positive images.

First step: Read (or reread) Saturday's post.
Now more than ever, downtown marketing unity.

Second step: Consider the following comments in its wake.

Kerberos said...
I think the sign is a brilliant idea. Bluegill and I noticed your sign this past Thursday evening. Shouldn’t some type of association be doing this (i.e., unified downtown marketing as considered by the senior editor in the original post) for all downtown businesses? For instance, if DNA is a “Main Street” organization, should it not fall on them to help promote this type of information? Is there another downtown type of business organization that could be doing this? It seems to me that this is another “cheap” way to promote not only one’s business, but also downtown as a whole.
4:20 PM

dan chandler said...
First, I want to make one distinction. “Main Street” organizations are not intended to be “merchant organizations,” per se. Main Street organizations have their roots in historic preservation; historic downtowns have the best chance of survival if they are active centers of commerce and culture. To aid in downtowns' survival, Main Street organizations are organized around a Four-Point Approach: Organization, Promotion, Design, and Economic Restructuring. As for Promotion, the National Trust states that Main Street organizations should:

Sell a positive image of the commercial district and encourage consumers and investors to live, work, shop, play and invest in the Main Street district. By marketing a district's unique characteristics to residents, investors, business owners, and visitors, an effective promotional strategy forges a positive image through advertising, retail promotional activity, special events, and marketing campaigns carried out by local volunteers. These activities improve consumer and investor confidence in the district and encourage commercial activity and investment in the area.

I don’t know that it “falls on” Develop New Albany to organize, alone or with partners, a downtown marketing campaign; we are volunteers with no official government mandate. However, I believe it is very clear that such a campaign is consistent with Develop New Albany’s mission.

Ok, enough of the hair splitting.

Develop New Albany historically has handled Promotion in a number of ways (and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few). Our “First Tuesday” events bring anywhere from 100 to 200+ people to a New Albany business each month. Our email blasts, which reach a few thousand people, promote various downtown business events such as Grand Openings/Ribbon Cuttings, etc.

Develop New Albany recently has become much more focused on the advertising side of Promotion. While everything at Develop New Albany is a group effort, I in particular would like to single out Board Member Dave Clark of D-Zine as someone who is helping give new life to our Promotion efforts. For the past six months, Dave has been working on a downtown marketing plan that includes print advertisements in both the Tribune and a regional food/dining magazine (Food and Dining). A few of these ads have already run. Dave, who works in the advertising industry, is able to use his knowledge, contacts and his bulk purchasing power to ensure that downtown gets the best campaign possible. So far, that has been a pure Develop New Albany effort.
(continued at next post)
10:25 PM

dan chandler said...
(continued from prior post)
In joint meetings between Develop New Albany and the New Albany Urban Enterprise Association, marketing was indentified by board members as one of four areas where the two organizations can and should be working together. That decision was made just in the last couple months so it’s too early to tell exactly what direction this partnership will take. Personally, I’m very excited by the opportunities that may come about from this collaboration. If you see a Develop New Albany or Urban Enterprise Association board member, ask him or her about the joint project.

Can our marketing efforts be better? I believe I can speak for the whole organization when I state that we at Develop New Albany always are open to constructive criticism. We want to fulfill the Main Street organization objectives. Everyone may not always agree on how to get there, but we’re willing to have the debate.

Particularly troubling to me is that over the past month or so, I’ve heard a number of rumors that a particular individual involved in downtown redevelopment has been whispering into peoples’ ears that Develop New Albany is not a Main Street organization and should be dissolved. Through four emails, one sent each of the last four weeks, I’ve asked this individual what he believes the organization should be doing to improve itself and to better fulfill its mission. Like I said, we’re open to constructive criticism. I’m sad to say that I have yet to receive a response from this individual. In contrast, Bluegill and I have had several discussions on this blog and in person on the merits of Develop New Albany. While he and I sometimes disagree, Bluegill always is quick to articulate the reasons behind his differences with Develop New Albany. While I do not always agree with him, I respect him and his opinions. I value his interest in and passion for downtown. I wish everyone who spoke against Develop New Albany showed similar readiness to articulate his or her rational and was as eager to engage in constructive criticism. When hearing the unconstructive variant, criticism unaccompanied by articulated reasons, it’s difficult not to wonder if there are motives other than seeing that Main Street organization goals are achieved in New Albany. I’m waiting to be proved wrong. I hope I am wrong.

One of the “Promotion” elements is to “Sell a positive image.” That should be easier.
10:25 PM

Third step: Discuss among ourselves.