The Origins of Windustrious

By Sarah Taylor, spring 2006  - Back to Home - Table of Contents

Cleveland faces a unique opportunity: to become, not only the first city in the U.S. to install an off-shore wind farm, but the first city in the world to install a wind turbine farm in fresh water. Wind turbines will eventually be constructed in lakes, including Lake Erie. The branding and marketing potential of being able to boast that we have created the first one on the planet, with the associated international recognition, would surely be enormous. It would translate into a powerful image of Cleveland as a progressive, productive, jobs-creating city, with a bubbling business climate, a place where young professionals will want to come and stay, and a very interesting tourist destination.

We can lead the way, or we can simply follow along, after the trend has gathered momentum elsewhere. Given our assets in infrastructure, location and historically-grounded expertise in relevant industries, one could say we had an actual responsibility, an obligation, to be at the forefront. By acting now, we could reap the tremendous business opportunities of being in the vanguard of research, development and production of the equipment that the rest of the country, and the world, will inevitably be demanding. If we reject this opportunity, and build turbines out on the lake only after others have taken the initiative somewhere else, we will be consciously throwing away not just that free marketing asset, but the economic advantages of taking a leadership role in this new technology.

If the city's marketing forces could help in connecting up our history and our potential, our branding would surely become automatic.

I have thought up a three-part slogan: "INDUSTRIOUS -> ILLUSTRIOUS -> WINDUSTRIOUS!", which would link our industrial past (in the Flats), our contemporary engineering success (as exemplified in the construction of the Peter B. Lewis Building in our world-renowned University Circle), and our manufacturing future (as symbolized by turbines on the lake). Dennis Yurich created the exciting, funnily serious animation. It ends with a picture that could be adopted as a very powerful static image for the city:

http://www.windustrious.org

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