Charlotte Searches for Its Soul Amidst Wachovia's Looming Departure
30 Sep
My colleague Lisa Hoffmann likes to refer to Charlotte as a FisherPrice city — a town built with pre-fabricated blocks, devoid of identity. And, boy, is she right.
Sure, we’ve got a few enclaves of cultural flavor. Distinctly southern restaurants like Mac’s BBQ and Price’s Chicken Coop come to mind, and neighborhoods like NoDa and Dilworth have their charms. But by and large, Charlotte is a pleasant, sanitized, vanilla town. Our tailgate parties are wine and cheese affairs, for crying out loud! Wine and cheese with football? Seriously?
Now, with the downfall and buyout of Wachovia, Charlotte’s identity as the nation’s second largest banking center is in jeopardy, too. Charlotte is still reeling from a gas crisis and the growing financial crisis. The last thing we need is an identity crisis.
John Mangione, owner of the PRstore franchise on Long Island, uses a powerful presentation to alert his clients to their identity crises. He’ll spread their ragtag assortment of inconsistently branded marketing pieces on a table and ask them, “Which company are you today?”
The beauty of John’s demonstration is that many of the businesses that come to him suffer from brand schizophrenia. They’ve pieced together their marketing collateral over the years using half a dozen providers. But Charlotte’s problem isn’t schizophrenia — it’s amnesia.
Ours is a city of immigrants, not from Latin America, Europe or Asia, but from New England, the Great Lakes region, and the mid-Atlantic. Native Charlotteans are actually on the Endangered Species list. It’s no wonder that few people know of our city’s roots, or that the Charlotte brand is a flavorless potage designed to appeal to everyone.
It is often through great hardship that the character of a community emerges. In 1940, a few hundred fighter pilots from the RAF fended off the German Luftwaffe’s assault on Great Britain. After 9/11, we saw the resilience and resolve of New Yorkers. New Orleans is, to this day, piecing back together a city whose spirit survived Hurricane Katrina even when its homes couldn’t.
Charlotte, too, will show its character as we lean headlong into the winds of economic hardship. Though our struggle may not compare to those of London, New York or New Orleans, the depth of our character will be tested just as deeply. Let us hope ours shines just as brightly.




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