In a world beset by relentlessly bad news, it's always good to have something to cheer. So I'm delighted to report that Midtown is dead.
In 2010 a central London business district got ideas above its station and attempted to rebrand its local area as Midtown. Apparently historic names like Bloomsbury, Holborn and St Giles weren't good enough, what people needed was an "umbrella term" to pull them together to better appreciate the quality of the area, or so the big cheeses said. They hung Midtown banners from lampposts, they set up a Midtown tourist information centre and they even paid the Evening Standard to include a four page pullout extolling Midtown's central delights.
District bosses said things like "It’s innovative, classic and historic, but also contemporary and techdriven." They wrote things like "Why Midtown is a dream destination for the 'bleisure' seekers mixing work and play". They even claimed "Lots of people are using Midtown now who five years ago just would not have done." But the wider public ignored them, the dreadful name completely failed to catch on and hallelujah they have now given up.
The new name for the former Midtown business district is the Central District Alliance. This is an even worse name, if anything, the very epitome of blandly forgettable. But that's fine because nobody is attempting to forcibly rebrand the area this time, just getting on with their ambassadorial job in a less megalomaniac way. This change was actually made last June but it's taken me a whole year to notice, which just goes to show what an inoffensive name the Central District is.
One catalyst for the name change was the expansion of the business district to include Clerkenwell, which as a separate enclave didn't really fit the Midtown brand. The other was the departure of CEO Tass Mavrogordato, a one-woman tornado who for ten years had a rebranding bee in her bonnet and was never stuck for a quote when the Evening Standard needed one. She's since gone on to form her own business consultancy called Fantasstic Solutions, whose website makes some interesting claims...
"Consultancy services abound, and many sit in the middle ground relying on buzz words, rhetoric and theory to consistently up-sell time and services. In contrast, we are pioneering and progressive and create bespoke solutions that deliver."
Her bespoke solution that didn't deliver is not mentioned. But let's not worry ourselves over why it failed, let's just celebrate that all trace of Midtown is now gone. Sometimes the really awful ideas don't win out, so there's some positive news for us all to hang onto.
