No mention of the thousands of homeless people who wonder the streets. Why don't you focus on them. I don't care about artists and beer makers. Do something important. All the potheads moving here with no jobs. Rents are at there highest. Spokane was better before the pot shops. Mostly white people live here. Am I the only one that lives here without a tattoo? Fit people? I have seen my share of land whales walking around.
Funny how they advertise how cheap Spokane is when they are catering to hipsters and yuppies who's sole purpose in life is to make the cost of living skyrocket with their overpriced condos and $30 coffees.
Thanks MaryAnn for the comment. This seems to be a perpetual and almost classic problem in modern marketing - if you over or under represent the population in terms of diversity, there is room for critique. Our focus for this ad was to find people who were creating, building, and executing amazing things in the city, and then to try to weave a story of connection between them. We didn't want to falsify what the area looks like demographically, but we didn't want to miss showing off the contributions of different parts of the population. This isn't always a discussion in boardrooms when these types of ads are being designed, but certainly was was during our process. When we landed on our final list of people, we had dozens of others who could have easily have been heralded in this video for their work. In that group we had the creators of Terrain, the owners of Batch Bakeshop, the Marketing Director of Hoopfest. Did we choose the right people for this video? Maybe. Maybe not. The balance of ensuring inclusion and honesty always seems like a strained one in this business, and one we considered in our process. Current census data put Spokane City at 81% White, 7% Hispanic, 3% Asian, 2% Native, 2% Black. We ended up with 11 people in this story including the two couples, so I think we came close to those numbers if you were looking at people as percentages, but we certainly could have tipped the scales in the other direction by choosing differently. In the end we had too many great stories to choose from, and we tried to find a common story-line that brought them all together in a real way. We didn't go into this process to fill check boxes on those percentages, but to tell a story of people working together. Spokane doesn't look like New York or Seattle or San Francisco or Panama City or Tokyo - it looks like a city nestled in the Inland Northwest with its own traditions and stories. We hope that there will be more such videos in the future to continue to show off the contributions of people of color in Spokane and continue to attract business owners and entrepreneurs who can diversify this city with ideas. If there are people we should know about, please send us a note at hi@factory.town anytime. We would love to know about them so we can tell their stories or possibly work together someday. factory.town | Census Data: censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US5367000-spokane-wa
