The city of San Francisco is going through a rebranding that has local corporations putting some of their own marketing muscle to work.
“We’re about to enter a rocket ship period here,” said Ghazi Shami, CEO of Empire, which recently hosted Brand Innovators’ Culture and Entertainment Summit in San Francisco. The city’s streets have been transformed by an influx of companies attracted by falling rents and a new administration focused on reenergizing the urban core.
“I think it’s galvanizing the city and getting a lot of people behind them. It’s been really amazing to see what the city has looked like since January,” he told the Summit’s audience.
As a tech industry center, San Francisco suffered from the pivot to remote work during the COVID pandemic, and was slow to recover, due to an image of decay and lawlessness downtown. Office attendance is still 52% of what it was before the pandemic and far below the average in other major cities, and foot traffic downtown has suffered. Shami mentioned watching with dismay videos online tagging the city as “the armpit of America.”
Newly elected mayor Daniel Lurie has focused on changing that conversation, and some early signs of a rebound are becoming apparent. A report from the city’s comptroller noted visitors are coming back – the city recently hosted the NBA All-Star Game – and public transport ridership and restaurant openings are both on the rise.
“For the first time in five years, people feel San Francisco is headed in the right direction,” said Lurie, in a speech marking his first 100 days in office. “People are betting on San Francisco again.”
Plans are developing for a number of initiatives to leverage several big-ticket events coming to the Bay Area in 2026. On February 8, Super Bowl LX will kick off at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, and the same stadium will host early rounds of the FIFA World Cup, which will be played across North America next summer.
The Bay Area Host Committee, the organization leading the charge to facilitate all these and other events, is trying to boost the local economy and employment through sports, not only by attracting events, but by “leveraging these events to really galvanize the community and the region,” said Jessica Wong, the committee’s vice president, partnerships & client services. The group has partnered with leagues such as the NBA and NFL and other marketers on programs to encourage the use of local vendors, improving public spaces and increasing hiring of underrepresented populations, such as its Bridge to Work initiative.
“We’re working with the leads continuously to try to keep the business and the workforce development here in the Bay Area,” she told the Summit audience.
For many companies, committing to the effort was logical. “We’ve been a Bay Area-based company since our inception,” said John Reseburg, VP, marketing, partnerships & communications at EA SPORTS. The video game company’s legacy is tied to its Madden NFL franchise, developed with the late football coach John Madden, “who, of course, is a Bay Area icon,” he told the Summit audience.
“Fast forward to where we are now, we’re still carrying that motivation forward,” he said, and added the company is working with the Bay Area Host Committee to bring its FC Futures football program and other events to the Bay Area.
Airbnb, another local company, also has announced plans to launch efforts as part of its partnership with FIFA in 2026 that will include San Franscisco. The city will be part of the company’s World Cup Host Cities program, supporting initiatives that benefit local communities.
“An environment of optimism”
Lurie came into office in January, promising to make the city safer and more business-friendly, and has made lining up corporate support a key part of the revitalization agenda, rounding up company CEOs and other business leaders to join the efforts. In his 100-days speech, he singled out “the visionary, civic-minded leaders across sectors who have stepped up in one of our greatest moments of need.”
He specifically singled out The Downtown Development Corporation and the Partnership for San Francisco, for bringing together “some of the most innovative business leaders of our time, (who) will serve as ambassadors for those in this city and around the world who are interested in bringing business back to San Francisco.”
Modeled after the Partnership for New York City, born in that city’s fiscal crisis of the late 1970’s, the Partnership for San Francisco boasts a board of directors that includes Google President Ruth Porat, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and Visa CEO Ryan McInerney and a roster of local companies. The Downtown Development Corporation is focused on boosting the city’s downtown core, modeled after the post-9/11 efforts of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Its board includes the CEO of payments company Ripple and Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay.
A number of locally-based companies—including Visa, Wells Fargo, Gap and Levis Strauss—also joined to launch the Downtown Volunteer Coalition, a nonprofit to drive corporate engagement in the city’s revitalization through partnerships with community-based organizations. The group recently announced the Golden State Warriors, Google, and the San Francisco Giants have joined the initiative, which claims in its first year it spent 1,037 hours completing 16 service projects including cleaning streets and parks, and improving public spaces.
One of the Coalition’s charter members, Levi Strauss & Co. kicked off its annual Community Day observance this year with a project called “These City Walls” partnering with neighborhood organizations and local artists to commission 25 murals to improve public spaces. Announcing the project, CEO Michelle Gass restated the company’s connection with its home town, where Levi Strauss conceived the denim jean in 1873 to clothe Gold Rush miners.
“For over 170 years, San Francisco has inspired our creativity, our values and our commitment to make a difference. We’re going to do our part to ensure the city’s future is as bold and bright as its past,” said Gass. The company claims over the past two years, it has contributed more than $1.2 million to nonprofits and organizations supporting local arts, culture and revitalization, and employees have volunteered nearly 4,700 hours to those efforts.
Another effort, titled “It All Starts Here,” brought together 43 local businesses to sing the city’s praises and reverse what some saw as a “doom loop” narrative. Crafted by Goodby Silverstein and Partners, digital and outdoor ads touted the city as the birthplace of innovations as varied as the waterbed, the electric streetcar and Google. Ads featured unlikely pairings such as University of California and the characters of film Monsters Inc., from Bay Area company Pixar.
The agency claims the campaign generated more than 2 billion PR impressions over 12 months and research shows it affected attitudes of local residents. Eighty-two percent of San Franciscans polled said it made them feel hopeful about the future of the city and 86% said it made them feel proud. (The agency’s co-founder, Rich Silverstein, is a member of the Partnership for San Francisco.)
Many speakers at the Brand Innovators Summit referenced an “environment of optimism” brewing in the city. Most noted the city has always been an incubator of business and creativity, and now with the collaboration between business and government, the message is getting across San Francisco’s vitality.
“It’s not without challenge,” said Reseburg. “But the environment is there to show you that world-changing things can happen here.”
