And good afternoon, thank you so much.

And thank you to the organizers of Republika, particularly Andreas Gephardt and Sandra Mimich, for inviting me to take part in this incredible event. Berlin is such an amazing place to discuss media, technology and creativity. Government isn't always associated with creativity.

In fact, many might suggest that you are often in opposition. But my experience has been very different. For 12 years, I served as the commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment in New York City. And it was my great privilege and pleasure to find ways for government to serve and support the creative industries of New York City,

to listen to the needs of the community and to use the platform of city government to empower this community for the greater good of the city. In partnership with companies, schools and local nonprofits, we really tried to launch a different approach to government. Another thing government isn't usually associated with

is a smart, savvy, authentic marketing campaign. And while the case study of Made in New York that I will be presenting to you today is by no means a new idea, the brand and the programs it represented really struck a chord with the community and resonated during a time of deep transformation and ultimately opportunity for the city of New York.

It's been over a year since I transitioned to my new role out of government and at Bloomberg Associates. In that time, it has been amazing to see the challenges that faced in New York are shared by cities around the world. For 12 years, I was tasked with how to better serve the city of New York

through media and technology, how to attract and retain businesses and better serve New Yorkers and the millions who flocked to our city each year to experience the city they had come to know and love on film and in TV. And along the way, we learned a lot about the importance of raising awareness, fostering a community identity

and developing new platforms to tell these incredible stories. When Mayor Bloomberg's administration came to an end in December of 2013, I joined seven other leaders from the Bloomberg administration to create Bloomberg Associates. It's a new type of nonprofit consultancy

that's rooted in municipal experience and innovative approach to tackling the challenges facing global cities today. Our team works across eight disciplines with the mission to help cities improve the quality of life of their citizens. We partner with mayors and their senior staff at no cost in cities like London, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro and Kansas City.

I lead the media and technology team where we focus on media and tech's ability to promote and enable public communications and inform economic development strategies. Other disciplines in our group include arts and culture, marketing and tourism, municipal integrity, social services,

sustainability, urban planning and transportation. We're headquartered in New York City but pay frequent visits to our global city clients, working closely with their mayors and the senior staff and local partner organizations. In my experience in these diverse cities, I've come to see how universal some of the challenges and opportunities

we faced in New York City under Mayor Bloomberg truly are. The Made in New York story embodies a lot of the themes I'm seeing in other cities as they look to foster the development of their creative communities to create and sustain jobs and generate hometown pride. So let's take a look at New York City's example

and see what we can draw from that experience. New York City has a phenomenal creativity, a creative community of artists and makers. Filmmaking began in New York City over 100 years ago and then moved to sunny Los Angeles. But it was in the 1950s in some back-to-back Oscar-winning films

like On the Waterfront, West Side Story, 12 Angry Men, that filmmakers were inspired to venture out of Hollywood and shoot in Gotham. However, the film industry is cyclical, and attractive tax credits lured a lot of productions away. Of the course of the aftermath of 9-11,

there was real concern that many businesses, including the entertainment business, would leave New York City. And in 2002, when I stepped into my role as New York City's film commissioner, there was really little film and television production work to oversee. For the city, the media business held great potential,

and I could see the opportunity. The film and TV industry not only had the power to stimulate the economy by employing a significant number of people, but it also offered marketing opportunities for New York City at a time when the city needed positive attention. On taking office, Mayor Bloomberg charged city agencies to reposition their services

to embrace an economic impact strategy to lure businesses back to New York, and our charge was to diversify the city's economy, to really promote its strengths, including the creative sector, change perceptions that New York City was too expensive and too difficult to do business in, and to end runaway production,

as other states and countries were luring filmmakers away with tax incentives. So, where did we begin? Well, we began with customer service. We got to know our customers and, more importantly, their needs. Why weren't they shooting in New York City? What could we do to lure them back?

We sought to identify key stakeholders in the community, production crews, studios, networks, independent filmmakers and academic institutions. By conducting a listening tour, we were able to identify their needs and to build their trust by speeding up the permitting process, moving it online, processing permits in minutes rather than just days.

We engaged with local businesses, from florists to dry cleaners to lumberyards, to show them how they could benefit from increased film production with a vendor discount card program. We also looked at free marketing credits, offering outdoor media to productions. We looked at what the city had the ability to offer

and found there was inventory all over the city, on bus shelters and subway cars, where we could provide productions with free marketing assets. This was particularly impactful for the local small independent films that wouldn't otherwise be able to afford advertising in the city. But to unify the industry and the community

and to further celebrate their craft, we created a marketing campaign that really tapped into local pride. And so a logo was developed in order to serve as a city seal of approval, suggest the high quality of the local media workforce and signify local pride, city pride. As I mentioned earlier, governments aren't normally known

for their savvy marketing and branding, and we knew the industry we were aiming to promote was best positioned to help us figure out exactly how to tell our story. So we enlisted the industry as partners and found they were very excited and willing to do their part to celebrate and support their city.

We partnered with a local company, Radical Media, to develop and design for the logo. And it was important that this logo be designed by a local company to show that the city was supporting the same industry that it was aiming to promote. It looks like a classic New York City subway token or a manhole cover. The city trademarked the logo to make it official

and determine exactly how it could be used. The logo was a unifying sentiment. It was embraced locally and then globally. The pride it inspired was palpable. Made in New York branding, and here are some examples of it, Made in LA, Made in Oakland.

We saw signs outside for Made in Berlin. The concept of Made in asserts a brand's quality, originality or authenticity, and it builds on the appeal of local artisans and the maker movement. These campaigns are all looking to sell an audience on the value of these ideals. In our case, these ideals were the pride we felt for our local workforce

and the tremendous talent and creativity that we had in New York City. The logo was the first step in unifying New York City's creative community, and we continued to grow the brand and all that it stood for with programs and efforts that were really designed to incentivize, promote, support and reward.

It was imperative to incentivize the community to work together, and in the case of New York, to work together in New York City. The mayor's office of media and entertainment had a series of incentives, a tax credit, it's the first municipal tax credit program to support local TV and film production,

and it really put us on the map and leveled the playing field with other territories. It allowed other efforts from marketing to customer service to community engagement that really set us apart and guaranteed repeat customer support. The marketing credit offered free media exposure to local productions, and these were ads appearing on subways, buses

and other out-of-home media outlets. The vendor discount card program offered discounts at local businesses to people working in the production industry. A mobile app encouraged people to find participating vendors while they were on set. We also created a PSA campaign

to really promote the production community and to really explain their contributions to the local economy. The goal was really to foster the general public support and awareness of the industry. So a public service announcement campaign was created, and you can see a sample of one here.

These are the costume designers from a television show on HBO called Boardwalk Empire, and they appeared across all media assets. And so it was a really interesting way to promote the sector and to really promote the industry. A strong talent pipeline comprised of an array of education

and workforce development opportunities is key to ensuring a sustainable creative community. It was also essential to create opportunities for all New Yorkers to join that community and help build an industry and a creative community that represented the great diversity in our city. So we created a production assistant training program.

It was a month-long, free, full-time program and two years of job placement assistance. The program was run in conjunction with a local not-for-profit organization that worked closely with unemployed and underemployed New Yorkers. It was a prime example of how a public-private partnership could empower residents to find jobs

and become part of the creative community. The media center, which was a physical space in Brooklyn, housed an incubator, office space and educational offerings, as well as a screening room and a public cafe. The goal here was to bring together traditional and new media creators, another public-private partnership that exemplified how the city could provide local organizations

with the support they needed to reinvent and launch their businesses and projects in an ever-changing media landscape. We also created industry panels, where we had experts working in the industry, sharing their experiences and insights, and we hosted in partnership at local schools and cultural organizations

that were free and open to the public. And we also created a blueprint for the Moving Image curriculum. It was a certified guide for lower school, elementary school and high school students, outlining how to teach the moving image and exposing students to the creative industries from a very early age.

We also wanted to reward the community with greater visibility and honor. So we promoted local talent and emphasized the positive economic impact brought by the industry. It was highlighted by the mayor's commitment to the community. He literally opened the doors of his mayoral residents to the community

to recognize and celebrate their contributions to the city in an event, and you can see one here. The Made in New York Awards created ambassadors out of the recognizable talent in New York City. You can see Robert De Niro. You can see Tina Fey, Spike Lee, Meryl Streep and many others. Through the Made in New York Awards and the marketing and branding efforts across all of our initiatives,

other communities began to take notice. By 2010, New York City's tech community was growing in a very big way, and they were hungry to create the same sense of community and pride that the film industry now enjoyed in New York City. We also saw that the film industry was changing before our eyes,

embracing new technology and making and distributing content in a variety of new ways. The Made in New York logo struck a chord with this community. It just felt authentic. So we created a riff off of the Made in New York brand with We Are Made in New York in 2012.

Given the similarities we saw between the digital and tech industries, we were able to apply the hallmarks of Made in New York with great success. Incentivized, you know, earning the We Are Made in New York distinction, digital companies that base 75% or more of their development work in New York City and had at least 10,000 users

were eligible to receive the We Are Made in New York distinction. We included promotional materials and street marketing. We created a campaign that featured the local startup founders and employees photographed in their offices. And you can see a sample here, and there's a sample of the bus shelter. We had a digital presence was built for the campaign

and that included an interactive jobs map highlighting job opportunities with the Made in New York qualifying companies. And this was showing how the brands could be directly linked to access and economic opportunity for local residents. And we also provide an easy access to resources,

a one-stop shop website which provided access to resources and programs for New Yorkers in the tech sector who were looking to become part of the digital ecosystem. So by creating this We Are Made in New York unifying brand, we really helped to illustrate the city's support for the tech sector.

For any creative community, the ability to do these four things, incentivize, reward, promote and support, are incredibly valuable ways to develop a creative community's potential, and we have the numbers to prove it. The Made in New York brand campaign was really a signature effort by Mayor Bloomberg's administration,

and it underscored the growth of the media and tech centers in New York City over the last decade. The film industry represents a seven billion dollar-a-year impact on the city of New York. Over 130,000 New Yorkers are employed in the film and television industry in New York.

Over 4,000 ancillary businesses benefit from the film and television industry. And with the We Are Made in New York campaign, we also have some statistics. Over 250,000 New Yorkers were employed in the tech sector by the end of the Bloomberg administration. So the branding and marketing efforts really unified our work

and allowed the media and tech industries to flourish in New York City. And now, as part of the work of Bloomberg Associates, we've had the opportunity to work with cities who are embracing media and technology and the spirit of the creative community to make their cities more livable. Here you can see an image of an event that we collaborated on in Mexico City.

We work very closely with the Laboratorio para la Ciudad, which is Mexico City's experimental office for civic innovation and urban creativity. It's the first city government department of its kind in Latin America, now serving as a global example as other cities look to see

how similar models can catalyze innovation in their communities. In East London, at the site of the former press and broadcast center for the 2012 London Olympic Games, is a new digital quarter, and it's emerging, and it's called Here East. We've worked very closely with the Greater London Authority,

the London Mayor's Office and the stakeholders at Queen Elizabeth Park on the amazing opportunities offered by the redevelopment of that park. Here East's physical space will help foster the creative community by creating a thriving commercial space, providing more than 7,500 jobs on site and in the local community. And in Los Angeles, we're working very closely

with a not-for-profit called the Ghetto Film School. It opened its doors in the South Bronx in New York City, one of the most underserved communities in New York, about 10 years ago, to help local students discover the art of filmmaking and unlock their creative potential.

The program connects with industry leaders. Here you can see director Catherine Hardwick. She's known, she was very involved in the Twilight film series. So she works with students and equips them with tools and education about how they can launch their career in the film industry. In 2013, the Ghetto Film School wanted to take its mission of education

in developing and celebrating the next generation of storytellers to the West Coast, and we helped them open a new facility in MacArthur Park in a Latino community called Hola in Los Angeles. So Bloomberg Associates introduced the city of LA to this organization and encouraged the mayor of the city

to celebrate the work of this not-for-profit and really showcasing a robust creative learning experience to impact a community. I've long supported artists and makers and am a strong proponent for the positive and lasting economic potential that strategic investment in creative industries can have.

I hope that this Made in New York case study and the examples of these other global cities, Mexico City, London and Los Angeles, inspire you to develop your own creative communities and create partnerships between the civic, business and creative leaders in your community. It's been a pleasure to visit Berlin.

We hope that we can take this approach and our sensibilities to connecting the creative community to civic engagement in a very robust way in the months ahead. Thank you very much and enjoy the rest of the conference.