Cadillac recently announced it is moving its headquarters to New York from Detroit. Some saw it as a sour bite of Detroit’s comeback dish. But other industry people are saying good luck with that. Tony Barlow, the creative director at Team Detroit–and ad agency based in Detroit that focuses on Ford–thinks it’s funny Cadillac would move to the SoHo neighborhood in New York. It’s a little late for SoHo, really, Barlow tells John Zemke at Metromedia. The hip factor is gone and the mall vibe is in the tired, expensive NYC neighborhood south of Houston Street. There’s a Prada store and Debbie Harry’s people are long gone.
In an interview with Metromedia, Barlow is asked about the move. He’s pretty frank: “Maybe Cadillac needs to find its soul somewhere else. It’s been searching for it for 20 years,” he says. At least twenty, a reader wants to add. Barlow might have moved the headquarters to Miami, if Cadillac needed to get away from Detroit so badly.
