Driving from New Orleans to Mobile, I passed this work in progress on the Biloxi waterfront. Directly across from the broad white sand beach and down the main drag from a coming-soon Margaritaville hotel and casino, the construction site really stood out.

No surprise why: it’s an art museum designed by Frank Gehry which was 11 months away from opening when Katrina came along. Hurricane winds broke loose a barge and drove it into the nearly finished building. They’re putting it back together now.

I happen to like Gehry and I like his work. I also found myself agreeing with him — or was he unknowingly agreeing with me? — when he said last summer that the ‘Bilbao effect’ is “bullshit”.

Still, I like that the museum will house local art (mostly from a mad potter named Ohr), and I think the people of Biloxi should be proud to have an exciting building in their midst. Maybe Jimmy Buffet will wander over from Margaritaville and play at the grand opening.

For their summer double issue on the world’s cities, they asked me for a cheat sheet of city brand fixes. I told them there are no quick fixes, and provided this readable but real list instead.

City Branding ticketsheet:
For the metropolis on the make, here’s your to-do list
Monocle magazine, Issue 15, vol. 1, July 2008

01. Stop running ads. They’re too expensive and unless they’re pitch-perfect, they make you look second-rate.
02. Call Frank Gehry—and hang up on him. Great architecture is splendid, but the “we hire a famous architect” gambit isn’t the infallible branding play it once was.
03. Put your anomalies to work. Just because you’re unhappy with an aspect of your city’s history or landscape doesn’t mean tourists feel the same way.
04. Create a sense of place on the ground. Rio’s black and white pavements or Norman Foster’s metro entrances in Bilbao are constant reminders you couldn’t be anywhere else.
05. Become the centre of something. Build on something true to you that locals can get behind, even if it’s bizarre. Rakvere, Estonia will hold the 2008 world sumo championships. But then Kaido Hoovelson, one of the world’s top wrestlers, is a local.
06. Synchronise tourism and investment promotion. This stops tourism officials from getting folksy and reminds the investment bureau there’s more to foreign business than hard numbers.
07. Get a movie filmed in your ’hood. It doesn’t even have to be that flattering: Strawberry and Chocolate showed Habaneros raising pigs in their homes and still made Havana look sexy and interesting. And interesting, after all is what you want to be.
-JH: Jeremy Hildreth is head of place branding at Saffron

(Note: I posted this first to Saffron’s website.)