Look Who's Cool! Quaker City Mercantile
12/17/2002

Quaker City Mercantile (formerly known as Gyro Worldwide) shows Philly how to sell its hip side.

When it comes to promoting Philadelphia as a place to live, anti-establishment branding guru Steve Grasse doesn't think a traditional ad campaign would work.

"If you ran an ad in a magazine that said, 'Come to Philly,' no one would look at it," said Grasse, CEO of Center City ad agency Quaker City Mercantile.

"Whereas if I read in Spin magazine about all these cool artists and what they were doing in Philly, or maybe I read about the Space 1026 artists' collective down in Chinatown, then I'd start to think maybe it would be really cool to be from Philly."

This kind of marketing savvy is exactly what Urban Warrior was looking for when she invited four teams of advertising professionals to help her brainstorm ways to bring people back into the city and help make it grow. Quaker City Mercantile's focus on the young and "cool" crowd is a welcome change. After all, the idea that "brainy young people" are essential to successful cities - promoted by Carnegie Mellon prof Richard Florida - is now so mainstream that it's been cited by the New York Times as one of this year's 100 great ideas.

What follows are two full pages of color ads developed by Grasse and his team, with photos shot by skateboarding photographer Adam Wallacavage. But, Grasse cautions, the ads are just background. They'd have to be a part of a comprehensive marketing effort to highlight the city's counterculture and bring an aura of cool to otherwise gritty neighborhoods.

His title for the campaign?

"Philthy - The City That Bites You Back."

"Our solution would be to capture a taste of underground Philly and show how cool and fun it is," said Grasse. "Because once the cool people stay, the Wharton grads are soon to follow.

"It's a concept for Philadelphia's counterculture, taking the [city's] name and making it somewhat subversive," Grasse said. "It's a message that's aimed at the Khyber crowd, rather than the Kimmel crowd."

Grasse said the ads would underline a whole "Philthy" movement: Philthy nights at certain clubs, for instance, a Philthy fashion show and Philthy grants for young artists.

Finally, the launch should include a "Philthy Guide" to city life, featuring "110 places you can go to get Philthy."

"It would be a kind of Zagats for hipsters," Grasse said.

Grasse's "Gen-X" style plan seems edgy enough to raise eyebrows in a city known for establishment thinking.

But I think edge might be worth a shot, particularly if we are talking about attracting a generation of young people.

After all, do we always want to play second fiddle when it comes to urban cool? Why shouldn't cities like Boston, New Orleans and San Francisco get a little competition from this City of Brotherly Love?

"Philadelphia has a unique brand of style which you are not going to get anywhere else," Grasse said. "It's working-class attitude mixed with urban hipster. Very laid-back, but still very artistic. And I would argue that it rivals places like Brooklyn, which is very hip right now."


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Look Who's Cool! Quaker City Mercantile