Who is Marketing the City to Foreign Businesses?

Op-ed: Who is marketing the city to foreign businesses? [Crain's New York]

While taxpayers invest millions each year in NYC & Company’s remarkably effective effort to draw visitors who eat in the city’s restaurants and buy tickets to Broadway shows, no bureaucracy has robustly taken up the cause of reaching out to foreign businesses.

The pandemic has created new reasons for foreign businesses to establish footprints on our shores, but unless New York invests more substantially in marketing itself, most of those businesses will go elsewhere—and we’re likely to lose out on vast opportunities to grow our economy and spread wealth to underserved communities.

Research that I helped lead at the behest of the Partnership for New York City tracks the extent to which the Big Apple is being outclassed. In the decade ending in 2017, Singapore attracted $120 billion in foreign direct investments. London boasted $65 billion. New York attracted a mere $30 billion. Chicago attracted nearly $7,900 of FDIs per resident; the Big Apple attracted a little more than $3,600 per head.

Overseas transplants create jobs, drive exports and spur innovation by investing more intensively in research and development than local counterparts. Spotify, the Swedish music streaming company, provides an emblematic example: It set up shop in New York in 2012 with a handful of staff and now boasts 1,600 workers.

?The problem isn’t that the five boroughs are less attractive or more expensive. We’re faltering because no one is marketing the Big Apple to overseas companies. London & Partners and World Business Chicago are laser-focused on attracting FDIs. But no institution in New York meets that mission with nearly so much focus.

?The telecommunications revolution, combined now with the explosion of remote work, is rendering one of New York’s great competitive advantages—its diverse supply of talent and centralized office space—more obsolete. But perhaps even more concerning is that the industries that represent the city’s economic future—technology and life sciences, among a handful of others—are only loosely associated with the five boroughs in the global public’s imagination. As I’ve discovered when surveying business leaders around the world, too many of the world’s young entrepreneurs and executives view the Big Apple as a center for finance and fashion but little else—not to mention the distorted perception they have of the outer boroughs.

To establish New York’s place as best in class, we should send more robust delegations—boasting more impressive displays—to trade shows and develop savvier campaigns online. We should set up satellite marketing offices in a range of the world’s commercial hubs, and partner with the creative industry to conjure more accurate and attractive images of all boroughs, much as Sex and the City did with its alluring narrative of Manhattan’s nightlife.

Finally, we need to demonstrate to the world that New York will provide a robust “concierge service” for businesses interested in setting up shop in the five boroughs—which the New York City Economic Development Corp. already provides with award-winning programs. Beyond serving businesses that have already “swiped right” on New York, however, we need to lure those still playing the field. Would-be investors should know about the welcome mat available to them here, or they’re liable to put down roots elsewhere.

In a nutshell, we risk failing to make the sale for failing to make a pitch.

Mayor Eric Adams understood the challenge well as Brooklyn borough president, and now he is in a position to address it properly. To maintain its place in the global hierarchy, New York must begin making a strong case for itself across the globe in clear and convincing terms.

?Gianluca Galletto, an adviser on international business development and urban innovation, is a former Director of International Affairs at the New York City Economic Development Corp

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