With a rousing new song to enlist Detroiters to believe in the city and turn it around, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing unveiled a new $10-million advertising campaign Tuesday that will plaster the city with billboards and flood the news media with its positive message.
The "I'm a Believer" campaign comes from a volunteer effort led by two local media specialists tired of all the Detroit bashers who live in the region and beyond. It addresses the hope that Detroit can rebound and regain its status as a world-class city.
"We're coming back," said Bing, when asked Tuesday why people should believe in Detroit. "We will be the city everyone wanted to be."
Newly elected Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel said the suburbs support Detroit's need to be successful.
"The suburbs developed from the city of Detroit," he said. "Their success is our success. The issues they are facing, we are facing. If Detroit does not come back, the suburbs will have a difficult time doing the same."
Paige Curtis, co-founder of the campaign and an owner of a Bloomfield Hills advertising agency, told the 200 dignitaries who showed up Tuesday at the Renaissance Center to launch the effort that Detroit needs more than another ad campaign.
"What we needed, and what we told the mayor, was we wanted to recruit an army, an army of volunteers to help Mayor Bing change our city, and that's what makes 'I'm a Believer' different. It's a call to change hearts and a call to action to encourage people to stop whining and do something."
Detroit paid nothing for the campaign. Its $10-million cost, raised totally from donations, reflects what someone would have paid to design the campaign, create its ads and a Web site, and buy advertising time and space.
"I'm a Believer" will feature 40 billboards and a slew of radio, TV and print ads with some of the region's leaders, entertainers and celebrities. The ads point people to the campaign's Web site, where they will find dozens of opportunities to help make Detroit a good, clean, safe place to live.
Spots feature Bing; the county executives in the tri-county area; Detroit's police and schools chiefs; Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy; numerous metro Detroit news media personalities, mystery writer Elmore Leonard; rapper Ro Spit, and music producer Trick Trick, among others.
Ferndale singer and songwriter Jill Jack wrote the campaign's song. She delivered it Tuesday with the City Mission Choir, a youth group in Detroit's Brightmoor neighborhood, and Beth Griffith, backup singer for Detroit blues songstress Anita Baker.
The ads will try to offset years of bad publicity that have made Detroit a poster child for the aging Rust Belt and a magnet for photographers who consider the city's abandoned buildings a new art form they dub ruin porn.
