Back to the subject of image: During a town hall meeting in northwest Detroit last week, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick talked to an overflow audience about the need to improve this city’s image problem. To illustrate just how negatively our fair city is viewed far and wide, he recounted an encounter in a nightclub while visiting the strife-ravaged Middle East. Someone asked the mayor where he hailed from, and Kilpatrick proudly told him. To which the man replied: “Oh, Detroit. That’s a rough place.”
“We have an image problem, an international image problem,” informed the mayor, who urged the audience to do their part to change the perception. “We cannot buy into what people continue to tell us,” he advised. “It’s time for us to start speaking better about ourselves.”
He’s right. To that end, News Hits offers up this new slogan — gratis, considering the city’s obvious financial straits — for use in future promotional campaigns:
“Detroit — it’s better than Baghdad!”
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